Cerro Tololo Environmental Information

Locally available information will be accessed from machines at CTIO: other information will be accessed from other sites in Chile and across the world. Clearly, if you're at CTIO, you will get faster results accessing the local datasets.

CURRENT SITE CONDITIONS

• The current site conditions and WebCam web pages shows current conditions on Cerro Tololo from the weather station and seeing tower. They are automatically updating web pages, which means that if you leave it open, it will automagically refresh every 2 min or so with the latest information.

• We have a separate page devoted specifically to Blanco 4m environmental conditions, showing the temperatures of various components of the 4m telescope. The upper truss temperature is inversely proportional to the focus for prime focus instruments (coeff = -135).

• Instantaneous data from CTIO's weather station updated on demand.

• COMMAND LINE OPTIONS: These can be used at the UNIX prompt on most of the workstations on Cerro Tololo.

  • seeing: shows a table of last ~10 seeing measurements
  • weat: shows a quick summary of weather information (outside temperature, wind, humidity, etc.)
  • temp4m: shows values from all of the 4m sensors. Focus is directly correlated with the "TEL UPPER TRUSS" values

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WEATHER MAPS

• Locally cached images:
  • Current GOES East infrared (10 micron) image and movie

• ESO's Satellite infrared image, with both of ESO's sites (Paranal & La Silla), Tololo+Pachon, and the ALMA site (Chajnantor) labeled.

• For even more views of South American cloud cover and weather, check out ESO's all-in-one weather map page!

• Intellicast's small and LARGE current satellite photo of South America.

• The Weather Channel's South American color-coded satellite views, in small and LARGE or
  Java-based small loop and LARGE LOOP showing the last 12 (?) hours of satellite images.

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Weather conditions at other Chilean observatories

• La Silla's MeteoMonitor (non-graphics version), or the graphics-intensive complete version. Another view of conditions at La Silla from ESO's Ambient Conditions Database.

• Cerro Paranal: current conditions at ESO's VLT site, from ESO's Ambient Conditions Database.

• Las Campanas: current observing conditions at Las Campanas site

• ESO's Meteorological Forecasts at ESO Sites http

Weather Information at CTIO

• The official Chilean weather forecast for La Serena (in Spanish)

• English Weather Forecast for La Serena

HISTORICAL RECORDS

• Historical Record of sky conditions on Tololo

• Weather statistics at CTIO (old) from the facilities manual.

• Seeing measurements from Cerro Tololo over the past few years are available on the Optical Engineering Page.

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Weather Information available from other sites

Weather forecast for pretty much anywhere in the world.
 
Chilean weather information
in Spanish
 
Forecast for Santiago
from Intellicast
 
Space Science and Engineering Center (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Real time data base
 
GOES-East images
Latest GOES 4 & 8 (GOES-East) Geostationary Satellite Images of South America, from SSEC ():
Visible 0.65µm  -  Shortwave IR 3.9µm  -  Water Vapor 6.5µm  -  Longwave IR 10.7µm
Western Hemisphere GOES 9 (GOES-West) image: VisibleIR
updated once daily. From Space Science and Engineering Center, Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison.
Global satellite composite image: IR
updated every 3 hours. From Space Science and Engineering Center, Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison.
 
Earth Viewer and View of the Earth from 35785 Km above CTIO

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Earthquake Information

Semi-real time information about the location and magnitude of recent earthquakes (including maps) is available from the National Earthquake Information Service. Their list is updated every day or so, but unfortunately not quite quickly enough to tell you where the tremor you just felt was centered!

The U. de Chile Geophysics Department maintains an excellent database of recent earthquakes in Chile, and Chilean weather information (in Spanish).

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