In April 1985, we started a program to measure trigonometric parallaxes for faint southern high proper motion stars, using a CCD at the Cassegrain focus of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) 1.5-m telescope. The program stars (mR > 16; μ ≥ 1 arcsec/year) were selected from the LHS Catalogue and the University of Chile proper motion program.

The X and Y positions of the stellar image centroids were obtained using the algorithms of DAOPHOT program packages. The precision of the measurement of one stellar image is about 6 milliarcseconds (0.02 pix). For stars with 16 < mR < 19.5 a precision of 2 milliarcseconds in the parallax determination can be obtained in a one year period. Trigonometric parallaxes for some stars common to other parallax programs are given, showing an agreement with those results within the quoted mean errors.

Several technical aspects of the present program are also discussed.