Image taken by Moskovitz while observing at the du Pont telescope at the onset of the earthquake. Normally, the blurred stars would appear circular.

As has been widely reported, Chile was struck by a powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake on 27 February. Installations of Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) were unaffected, and there have been no injuries to observatory staff—though some have suffered damages to their houses, or those of family.

Carnegie Fellow Nick Moskovitz was in the middle of taking a 10-minute exposure of an asteroid around 3:35 a.m. local time on the du Pont telescope when the earthquake began. According to Moskovitz, when the quake first hit it was a very gentle shaking. “I didn’t really notice it, I just figured I was getting really tired,” he said. The shaking lasted long enough though that he and others in the dome realized what was going on and debated whether or not they should leave. By the time they made a decision, the shaking had stopped. The observatory then lost power and began running on generators. Moskovitz continued to observe, but since the Internet and phone lines were down, he had no idea how big the earthquake was. “It wasn’t until I woke up in the afternoon and was able to get online that I had a flood of emails from worried family and friends.” Moskovitz is still at the observatory; his flight home rebooked from this past Monday, 1 March, to the coming weekend.

It has since been learned that the epicenter of the earthquake was located approximately 120 km north of Concepcion, and 320 km south of Santiago, leaving widespread damage and taking the lives of more than 700 people. Following the initial loss of power, operations on the mountain and the El Pino office in La Serena are now back to normal. For more updates on how the earthquake is affecting LCO, click here.