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https://mediahub.unc.edu/experiencing-soar/
Tucked away in the foothills of the Andes Mountains sits the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope. The telescope which was designed by two UNC alumni, Bruce Carney and Wayne Christiansen, has pioneered the way for other telescopes sitting on Cerro Pachon. The mountains that surround the Atacama Valley are home to dozens of telescopes used around the world. Cerro Tololo, the neighboring mountain, is the site for eight other telescopes with plans for more to come. “When we went to Chile for the first time to scope out a site to build the SOAR telescope, we were looking at Cerro Tololo. The mountain had so many telescopes on it. There was not a lot of room for a good site for another telescope. I looked across the way and saw Cerro Pachon and pointed at it and said ‘what about there?’ After a night of observing, my friend and I left Tololo and hiked up this other mountain, I got to the top and said ‘yeah, this is it.’ This is where we are going to build SOAR.” Christiansen said.