234
sledgehammer humour. Cesarsky misconstrued his clumsy humour when he
said to her, ‘How much are the observatories in Chile worth? I’ll buy them
from you so we can end the negotiations once and for all.’ Up to that point
the negotiations had indeed been about to end on a positive note. Aldana
placed his car at Cesarsky’s disposal, and I accompanied her to the airport. She
was most put out, and I could do nothing to convince her that it had all been
nothing more than a misguided joke. Twisted things stay twisted. Cesarsky
felt affronted and was in no mood to appreciate subtleties or easily forgive.
It also needs to be borne in mind that, since 1993, I had never been popular at ESO. I was invited to give a talk at the Catholic University of Santiago
de Chile, and I took the opportunity to make a detailed tour of the European
and American observatories in that country. I detected in them an underlying
scientific and technological colonialism that I did not like. I committed the
cardinal sin of telling the Chileans how we had done things in the Canaries to
keep our observatories Spanish. It needed to be understood, I told them, that
a sky of high astronomical quality was a ‘natural public resource’, which was
not something that should be sold along with the lands that lay beneath it. I
explained to them how on that basis we had negotiated advantageous collaboration agreements that were decisive in helping us raise the level of Spanish
astronomy. I seem to have opened the eyes of the new Chilean authorities,
who decided to renegotiate the agreements with the foreign astronomical
institutions. Pinochet had been thrown out of power to make way for democracy. At a later date the Chilean Vice-minister of Universities, Science, and
Technology visited the IAC and its Observatories. We spoke openly on a wide
range of issues. He forced a renegotiation for a new agreement with ESO, and
I keep as a memento the telegram he sent thanking me, after he had successfully negotiated a better return for Chile. It seems that some in ESO have not
forgotten that.
Astrophysicists have an insatiable thirst for photons. That is why, as
explained in the previous chapter, they need telescopes with wide-aperture
mirrors to reach the deepest confines of the Universe and view celestial objects
in greater detail. Hence, in nineties there were already projects for giant telescopes on the drawing board. The question was to determine up to what size
such telescopes would be technically viable. A further challenge was to find
sites with the sky quality demanded by such refined instruments.
The technology and experience acquired in the building of telescopes with
segmented primaries, such as the Gran Telescopio Canarias, had opened the
path to the design of telescopes with extremely large primary mirrors: the socalled extremely large telescopes (ELTs). Two projects arose in Europe: a fantastical one with a 100-m primary, the OverWhelmingly Large telescope
F. Sánchez
sledgehammer humour. Cesarsky misconstrued his clumsy humour when he
said to her, ‘How much are the observatories in Chile worth? I’ll buy them
from you so we can end the negotiations once and for all.’ Up to that point
the negotiations had indeed been about to end on a positive note. Aldana
placed his car at Cesarsky’s disposal, and I accompanied her to the airport. She
was most put out, and I could do nothing to convince her that it had all been
nothing more than a misguided joke. Twisted things stay twisted. Cesarsky
felt affronted and was in no mood to appreciate subtleties or easily forgive.
It also needs to be borne in mind that, since 1993, I had never been popular at ESO. I was invited to give a talk at the Catholic University of Santiago
de Chile, and I took the opportunity to make a detailed tour of the European
and American observatories in that country. I detected in them an underlying
scientific and technological colonialism that I did not like. I committed the
cardinal sin of telling the Chileans how we had done things in the Canaries to
keep our observatories Spanish. It needed to be understood, I told them, that
a sky of high astronomical quality was a ‘natural public resource’, which was
not something that should be sold along with the lands that lay beneath it. I
explained to them how on that basis we had negotiated advantageous collaboration agreements that were decisive in helping us raise the level of Spanish
astronomy. I seem to have opened the eyes of the new Chilean authorities,
who decided to renegotiate the agreements with the foreign astronomical
institutions. Pinochet had been thrown out of power to make way for democracy. At a later date the Chilean Vice-minister of Universities, Science, and
Technology visited the IAC and its Observatories. We spoke openly on a wide
range of issues. He forced a renegotiation for a new agreement with ESO, and
I keep as a memento the telegram he sent thanking me, after he had successfully negotiated a better return for Chile. It seems that some in ESO have not
forgotten that.
Astrophysicists have an insatiable thirst for photons. That is why, as
explained in the previous chapter, they need telescopes with wide-aperture
mirrors to reach the deepest confines of the Universe and view celestial objects
in greater detail. Hence, in nineties there were already projects for giant telescopes on the drawing board. The question was to determine up to what size
such telescopes would be technically viable. A further challenge was to find
sites with the sky quality demanded by such refined instruments.
The technology and experience acquired in the building of telescopes with
segmented primaries, such as the Gran Telescopio Canarias, had opened the
path to the design of telescopes with extremely large primary mirrors: the socalled extremely large telescopes (ELTs). Two projects arose in Europe: a fantastical one with a 100-m primary, the OverWhelmingly Large telescope
F. Sánchez