Visit by the Chilean Ambassador to CRAL

On Wednesday, March 19, 2025, we welcomed the Chilean Ambassador, Mr. Raúl Fernández Daza, accompanied by the Honorary Consul of Chile in Lyon, Mr. Ignacio Velasco Arellano, and representatives from our sponsoring institutions: Philippe Cassagnau for UCBL, François Roudier for the ENS de Lyon, and Aurélie De Souza for the CNRS. The purpose of this visit was to present our research activities, and more specifically our involvement in major instrument projects for Chilean telescopes.

For the past 25 years, CRAL has been a major player in the construction of instruments for the European Southern Observatory (ESO), designed for use with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Located in the Atacama Desert, a site renowned for the exceptional quality of its skies for astronomy, these instruments allow us to explore the Universe with unmatched performance. Following the 2014 installation 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.

The tour of the laboratories where these instruments are being integrated was accompanied by discussions about our research and the technologies used. One of the topics of discussion was the major risk associated with the potential establishment of a large-scale industrial project near Chilean astronomical sites, which would have a significant impact on astronomical observations.