CRAL press release following the visit of the Chilean ambassador on Wednesday 19 March 2025
On Wednesday 19 March 2025 we received a visit from the Chilean ambassador, Mr Raúl Fernández Daza, accompanied by the Honorary Consul of Chile in Lyon, Mr Ignacio Velasco Arellano, and representatives of our supervisory bodies, Philippe Cassagnau for UCBL, François Roudier for ENS de Lyon and Aurélie De Souza for CNRS. The aim of the visit was to present our research activities, and in particular our involvement in major instrumental projects on Chilean telescopes.For 25 years, CRAL has been a major player in the construction of instruments for the European Southern Observatory (ESO), coupled to the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Installed in the Atacama Desert, a site renowned for the exceptional quality of its sky for astronomy, these instruments enable us to probe the Universe with unrivalled performance. After the installation in 2014 of MUSE, our flagship instrument on the VLT, CRAL is now involved in the 4MOST (to be installed in Chile this summer), SPHERE+, BlueMUSE and HARMONI instruments.
Visits to the laboratories where these instruments are integrated were accompanied by discussions on our research and the technologies used. One of the topics of discussion was the major risk associated with the possible establishment of an industrial mega-project close to Chilean astronomical sites, which would have a major impact on astronomical observations.
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