Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
NOAO was founded in 1984 to join the operations of the Kitt Peak National Observatory in the United States with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. On October 1, 2019, NOAO merged its operations with the Gemini Observatory and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to form the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab)..