August, 2008 Purchase a piece of land for the base facility

We purchased a piece of land (about 15,000 m2) near the central downtown of San Pedro de Atacama city and is planning to build the base facility. This facility contains laboratories, machine shops, observing rooms, conference rooms, a medical office and lodgings, and becomes a support station for the whole stay. For the moment, it will be used for construction, maintenances and developments of remort control of miniTAO telescope, and constructions of instruments which is installed to miniTAO telescope. First, the building with 500 m2 will be built, and later we will expand it for the construction of the 6.5m telescope.

(fig.1) Positional relations between the preset area of the facility and Mt. Chaknantor

(fig.2) Configurations of the preset area

(fig.3) Mt. Chaknantor viewed from the road in front of the preset area

(fig.4) Present circumstances of the preset area