Observatorio El Sauce
Telescope hosting

Telescope hosting under the best sky in the world!

Observatorio El Sauce (the willow tree in Spanish) is a fully robotic observatory in the Río Hurtado valley, at the southern edge of the Atacama desert. Since 2015 it has hosted telescopes for science, astrophotography and space situational awareness: tonight, many of them are observing. Yours can be next.

See the plan and the prices

Right now

Live readings from the site's weather station appear here when the station is reachable; the weather pages keep the full record.

The all-sky camera at El Sauce, latest image — The sky over the site right now, from the all-sky camera, refreshed every minute. All the cameras.

What we do

We host your telescope in a robotic observatory and run it for you: today telescopes with m² of collecting area, for science, astrophotography and space situational awareness.

You never need to travel. Four technicians and engineers live on site, on duty during the day and the first half of the night, for installation, maintenance and troubleshooting. The buildings open and close their roofs on their own, and a custom weather station, a seeing monitor and all-sky cameras watch the sky for you.

Observatorio El Sauce has hosted telescopes since 2015. It shares its sky with Cerro Tololo, Gemini South and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and it is a professional, long-term home for the small and mid-sized telescopes those observatories cannot take.

The emission nebula NGC 6188 in narrow-band colours, with the bipolar nebula NGC 6164 at its side — The Dragons of Ara, NGC 6188 and NGC 6164, imaged from El Sauce by Ciel Austral, one of the teams whose telescopes we host. Image © Ciel Austral, used with their permission.

The site

Location	Río Hurtado valley, Coquimbo region, Chile
Coordinates	30° 28′ 14″ S, 70° 45′ 55″ W
Altitude	1 547 m
Clear nights	over 300 a year, with good seeing and no light pollution; see the measured astroclimate
Neighbours	Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Gemini South, Vera C. Rubin Observatory, La Silla, Las Campanas
Connectivity	2 Gbps symmetric fibre, Starlink backup, VPN to the local network
Power	72 kW solar plant with a diesel generator as backup
Hosting since	2015

The observatory's white buildings and domes along a dry ridge, mountains behind, under a clear sky — The observatory on its ridge above the Río Hurtado valley, seen from the air. The whole site can be flown over in the aerial visit, a 3D model surveyed from the air.

Hosting a telescope

The standard plan covers a shared building with an automatic roof, a swing radius up to 1.5 m, power, internet, telemetry and all basic maintenance, for one yearly fee in Chilean pesos with no entry fee. Larger telescopes, private buildings, installation and advanced support are quoted on request.