Organization
CTIO is one of two observatories managed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the other being Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) near Tucson, Arizona. NOAO is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which owns the property around the two peaks in Chile and at the headquarters in La Serena, Chile. AURA also operates the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Gemini Observatory. The 8.1 m (320 in) Gemini South Telescope located on Cerro Pachón is managed by AURA separately from CTIO for an international consortium. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is the funding agency for NOAO.
The Small and Medium Research Telescope System (SMARTS) is a consortium formed in 2001 after NOAO announced it would no longer support anything smaller than two meters at CTIO. The member institutions of SMARTS now fund and manage observing time on four telescopes that fit that definition. Access has also been purchased by individual scientists. SMARTS contracts with NOAO to maintain the telescopes it controls at CTIO, and NOAO retains the right to 25% of the observing time, and Chilean scientists retain 10%. SMARTS began managing telescopes in 2003.
Read more about this topic: Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
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