July 29, 2008
ALTAIR Seeks Community Input | The ALTAIR (Access to Large Telescopes for Astronomical Instruction and Research) committee, recently convened by NOAO, seeks to understand the needs of the US community related to ground-based O/IR telescopes in the 6.5- to 10-m aperture range. We ask you to respond to the ALTAIR committee survey regarding your current and future anticipated use of such facilities, including Gemini.
July 22, 2008
New Director of the WIYN Observatory | Astronomer Pierre Martin, director of science operations at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), has been selected as the new director of the WIYN Observatory, which operates 3.5-meter and 0.9-meter telescopes on Kitt Peak.
Starting September 22, Martin succeeds George Jacoby, who will return to the scientific staff of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). For more, see WIYN Press Release.
July 14, 2008
A Multiwavelength View of Celestial Fireworks | Around May 1, 1006 A.D., observers from Africa to Europe to the Far East witnessed and recorded the arrival of light from what is now called SN 1006, a tremendous supernova explosion caused by the final death throes of a white dwarf star. This image of SN1006 is a composite of optical, radio, and X-ray data of the full shell of the supernova remnant. The optical data was obtained at the University of Michigan’s 0.9-meter Curtis Schmidt telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. H-alpha, continuum-subtracted data were provided by FrankWinkler (Middlebury College) et al. The object has an angular size of roughly 30 arcminutes (about the size of the full Moon), and a physical size of 60 light-years, based on its distance of nearly 7,000 light-years. Hubble News Release
Image Credit—Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF GBT+VLA (Dyer, Maddalena and Cornwell, NRAO); X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/G. Cassam-Chenai and J. Hughes et al.; Optical: F.Winkler/Middlebury College and NOAO/AURA/NSF; and DSS
July 03, 2008
Siamese Twin Galaxies in a Gravitational Embrace | In what appears to be a masterful illusion, astronomers at Gemini Observatory have imaged two nearly identical spiral galaxies in Virgo, 90 million light years distant, in the early stages of a gentle gravitational embrace. The new image was obtained at the Gemini South telescope in Chile using GMOS, the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph.
Like two skaters grabbing hands while passing, NGC 5427 (the nearly open-faced spiral galaxy at lower left) and its southern twin NGC 5426 (the more oblique galaxy at upper right), are in the throes of a slow but disturbing interaction-one that could take a hundred million years to complete.
Image Credit: Gemini Obseratory
June 25, 2008
Huge Lenses for Dark Energy Camera | UK astronomers have reached a milestone in the construction of one of the largest-ever cameras designed to detect the mysterious component of the Universe known as Dark Energy. The pieces of glass for the five unique lenses in the Dark Energy Camera have been shipped from the US to France to be shaped and polished into their final form. The largest of the five is one meter in diameter, making it one of the largest lenses in the world. The camera will be placed on NSF’s Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to conduct a project called the Dark Energy Survey (DES), as well as other observations for the astronomical community. DES observations will start in 2011 and continue until 2016.
For more, see https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/
Image credit: UK STFC
June 19, 2008
White Dwarf Lost in Planetary Nebula | Call it the case of the missing dwarf. A team of stellar astronomers is engaged in an interstellar crime scene investigation. They have two suspects, traces of assault and battery, but no corpse. The southern planetary nebula SuWt 2 (seen in this color image taken with the 1.5-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile) is the scene of the crime, some 6,500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. For details, see Hubble Press Release.
Image credit: NASA, NOAO, H. Bond and K. Exter (STScI /AURA)
June 02, 2008
NOAO/NSO Newsletter number 94 | The June 2008 NOAO/NSO Newsletter includes articles on the new ALTAIR committee on large telescopes, a science highlight and operational report from the NEWFIRM infrared imager at Kitt Peak, and the results from a survey of the community on their use of the Gemini Observatory.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/NOAO/AURA/NSF
May 19, 2008
NOAO Currents Issue 3 | Read about the results of our Gemini Opportunity survey of the community, which showed great interest in increased US participation in Gemini. This issue of Currents also explains the need for active involvement by the community in the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope project, as we move toward public-private GSMT partnerships.
May 05, 2008
GLOBE at Night 2008 Reaches 62 Countries | The international star-hunting activity known as GLOBE at Night, led by the NOAO educational outreach group, inspired 6,838 measurements of night-sky brightness by citizen scientists around the world, including 660 digital measurements using handheld sky-quality meters.
The third edition of GLOBE at Night was held from February 25-March 8. Just over 4,800 of the measurements came from the United States (with 48 states and the District of Columbia reporting at least one measurement). Observers in Hungary submitted the most measurements (380) from outside the U.S., followed by Romania, the Czech Republic, Costa Rica, and Spain, all with over 100 observations. For more, see NOAO Press Release 08-05.
April 24, 2008
David Silva Selected as New Director of NOAO | The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) has selected Dr. David Silva as the new director of NOAO. Silva brings a wide variety of experience to this appointment, from his current duties as Observatory Scientist for the Thirty Meter Telescope project to past responsibilities for data management and user support at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Germany. During a prior tenure at NOAO from 1991 to 1996, Silva served as project manager during the commissioning of the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope on Kitt Peak, and as a staff astronomer in the U.S. office of the Gemini Observatory. Silva is scheduled to formally start work as director on July 7.
Image credit: Thirty Meter Telescope
Links to previous images [181].