GONG at CTIO is back on line

GONG at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO, Chile) is back on the Sun and observing! Below is one of the first H-alpha images taken early today (21 Aug 2026).

 

 

What goes up, goes down

On 20 August 2026, C8.0 class flare occurred in active region NOAA 14513. The active region was at about Eastern limb of the Sun. The flare was accompanied by a filament eruption, and a coronal mass ejection (CME).  Flare brightennings start appearing at about 11:24 UT.  Full flare ribbon is seen at 11:34 UT, and the first signs of erupting filament appear a minute later  at 11:35 UT.  CCOR1 observations show bright CME front appearing at about 12:00-12:15 UT. Attached video shows the filament eruption as observed by GONG at Teide (Canary Islands) station.

While most of the filament material leaved the Sun and formed the CME, some material can be seen falling down to the Sun. 

 

Some good news from CTIO

Finally we received good news from CTIO. Their TelOps day crew resumed working on Tololo regularly yesterday, although it will be next week before they have staff staying overnight. NISP team is attempting to restart the GONG operations. The skies over Tololo are beautifully blue (photo is courtesy of S. Heathcote).

 

Update on the status of the CTIO facilities

This is an update on the status of the mountain (CTIO) facilities and the prospects for reopening, which was received from the Director of the Cerro Tololo Observatory.

"Conditions are considerably better than in my last report and we are almost, but not quite, ready to resume regular operations.

After more than 20 days hard work by facilities operations  staff and contractors the access road has been repaired sufficiently to allow safe access by staff and, importantly, by heavy vehicles.  TelOps staff began recovery and planned engineering work at the Blanco telescope last Monday and teams from SOAR, Gemini and Rubin were able to get to Pachon for initial inspections last Friday.  We were also able to resupply the generators on Tololo last Friday and trucked water from a new provisional well to refill the water tanks this Monday.  You can find more information and pictures of the recovery work here 

Because a new storm front was forecast to bring rain and snow again today and continue over the weekend we again suspended work on the mountain today for safety reasons. However, so far the front has been much weaker than predicted so we may be able to resume work tomorrow.  FacOps have been able to provide hot lunches for the work crews this week and plans to resume full food and lodging services next week This will allow us to return to something more like normality with the full day crew going to the mountain each day and some staff staying overnight by the middle of next week.

So I hope that it will be possible to begin powering up and resuming operation of your telescopes on Tololo by the end of next week."

Total Solar Eclipse as observed at Ebro Observatory

On 11-12 August 2026, the IAU Working Group on Coordination of Synoptic Observations of the Sun and the International Space Weather Action Team on Data sets of historical observations of solar and geomagnetic activity (S1-03) held a joint workshop on "Synoptic ground-based solar observations for space weather and space climate". The workshop took place at the Ebro Observatory and included presentations about preservation of historical data, use of historical data for modern scientific research, current state of observational facilities in different countries, and plans for future networks of synoptic observations (ngGONG and SOLARNET/SPRING). The workshop was attended by scientists from Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and USA. On the last day, the workshop was visited by Dr.  Núria Montserrat, Minister for Research and Universities of the Catalan Government and Ellen S. Baker, a former NASA astronaut. Photo 1 shows (left to righth) Dr. Juan José Curto, Dr.  Montserrat, and Ms. Baker greeting the workshop participants. Their visit was related to the activities organized by the Observatory with respect to public viewing of the total solar eclipse.

 

The event included several public lectures about the history of Ebro Observatory, space flights from the perspective of former Spanish and US astronauts, astronomy studies of exoplanets, and space weather effects on Earth (photo 2). Before and during the eclipse, the observatory personnel was taking measurements of the atmospheric properties (wind, temperature) using small weather balloons (photo 3). Children were invited to draw pictures of solar atmosphere and stellar nebula (photo 4). 

 

Total solar eclipse took place at the end of the day during the sunset (see photos 5 and 6). After the dark, the evening concluded by public viewing of Perseids meteor shower.

 

Last image (photo 7) shows partial solar eclipse as observed by GONG at Teide station on Canary Islands. 

 

Getting ready for the eclipse?

The last total solar eclipse in Spain happened on August 30, 1905 (121 years ago!) and so, perhaps it is not surprising that the signs of this year eclipse (August 12, 2026) are everywhere. Would you like to try "Eclipse 2026" ice cream (photos 1-2)? Or perhaps, come to a roof-top at a hotel in Barcelona (photo 3). Eclipse creme brulee anyone (photo 4)? Photos 5-6 show eclipse signs for the public viewing event at the Ebro Observatory (Observatori de l’Ebre) in Tortosa, Catalonia.

 

GONG CT status update from 10 Aug. 2026

Local team at CTIO informed us that the UPS and workstation were on at GONG. NSO engineering team was able to access GONG station remotely. Data acquisition was started and verified. The PMFLAG has been turned off and all looks good.  The turret is still covered and the roll/pitch amplifiers remain off. The weather forecast for the next days is not good. Depending on the weather, the CTIO  team will return to the summit on Friday (8/14) or Monday (8/17). At that time, we could attempt restarting GONG observations.