The Astronomy Department at the Univ. of Concepción has an active education and outreach program. We offer workshops for high school physics teachers and students, astronomy exhibitions within our region, and public visits to our faculty telescope. Activities are coordinated by our Education Director Carmen Gloria Jimenez with the help of our telescope in-charge Roger Leiton, and several undergraduate students in Physics, Astronomy, and Science Education. Funding for these activities comes from Explora-CONICYT, Fondo ALMA, and the FONDAP Center for Astrophysics. The Astronomy Department operates a modern Meade 12-inch telescope on top of our Faculty building. The telescope is equipped with a CCD camera and serves for public outreach, student training, and professional astronomical observing. Smaller telescopes can also be set up on the 6th floor balcony (or on the lawns outside our department) for viewing brighter celestial objects. We also have a travelling astronomy exhibition which can make a week-long stop at any location within our region. Please contact Carmen Gloria for details on this exhibition.

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High School Education

We have several programs aimed at education of high school students in the Bio-Bio region. These programs are coordinated by our Education Director Carmen Gloria Jimenez, with the help of Roger Leiton and undergraduate students from Physics, Astronomy, and Education. Programs include workshops for high school physics teachers and a travelling astronomy exhibition. In August 2007, our Explora-Conicyt project was selected for funding: as part of this project, several high schools will compete in building their own light contamination meters and use them to measure local light contamination. Future projects include the distribution of astronomy teaching materials and presentations tailored to the high school science curriculum. More details (in Spanish) on our ongoing education projects can be found in our "Teachers Corner".

Public Visits

Note: Public visits are still being held, but high humidity and cloudy skies during winter have been disrupting our schedule.
Public visits (open to all public) are held on the 5th and 20th of every month (8:00 to 9:30 p.m. April to September, and 9:00 to 10:30 p.m. October to March). Additionally, groups of 10 to 20 people (school and university students, and other organizations) can make a special appointment to visit on any date depending on availability of the telescope and staff. Please contact our telescope in-charge, Roger Leiton, us to make an appointment. Visits include a 20-30 minute presentation or demonstration, followed by viewing through the telescopes. We reccommend that you attend only if the sky is clear; with clouds or rain one cannot view any celestial objects through the telescopes but only attend the presentation. While no appointments are neccessary on these nights, we may limit the number of visitors to 20 due to limitations in size of the telescope area. Children less than 15 years old must be accompanied by an adult. Bear in mind that it is neccessary to climb one flight of steps to access the telescope.

For security reasons, the building housing the telescope is locked every evening. The meeting point for the public visits is therefore just outside the main entrance of the building (at the sign marked "Telescopio"). Visitors will be then guided to and from the telescope by our staff.

Depending on both weather conditions (if clear) and target availability (if the object is high in the sky), public viewing with the telescopes includes direct viewing and photographing of our moon, our solar system planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), nearby star clusters in our galaxy, and other galaxies. Short presentations on various astronomical topics will also take place at every visit. A professor and several students from the astronomy department will be at hand to answer any questions.

Student Training

The 12 inch telescope uses a state-of-the-art CCD (Charge Coupled Device) camera controlled by a P.C. in the neighboring control room. This enables one to obtain digital long-exposure images of many distant objects in our Galaxy, and also external galaxies. The telescope and CCD is used by students for several course-related projects.

Professional Astronomy

On clear nights, the telescope is sometimes used for professional astronomy (monitoring the light curves (i.e. variations in brightness as determined from multiple images of the same source) of variable sources (variable stars and cataclysmic variables) in our Galaxy.