An observing site of the European Southern Observatory, founded in 1964, at an altitude of 2350 m on La Silla mountain in the Atacama desert of Chile about 90 km northeast of La Serena. ESO’s main optical instruments on La Silla are a 3.6-m reflector, opened in 1976; the 3.5-m New Technology Telescope (NTT), opened in 1989; a 2.2-m reflector jointly owned by the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, opened 1984. A 1.52-m reflector, opened in 1968, was closed in 2002. The ESO 1-m Schmidt, opened in 1971, was closed in 1998 but reopened in 2009 and is now operated by Yale University. Instruments at La Silla owned by individual nations include a Danish 1.54-m reflector opened in 1979; the 1.2-m Leonhard Euler Telescope owned by Geneva Observatory, opened 2000; and the 0.6-m TRAPPIST telescope of the University of Liège, Belgium, opened in 2010.

http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/lasilla.html Official observatory website.

http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/lasilla.html Facilities at La Silla Observatory.