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
April 09, 2008
Spectacular Star Cluster May Host Black Hole Missing Link | The well-known naked-eye star cluster Omega Centauri may be home to an elusive intermediate-mass black hole, according to observations made with the Gemini Multi-object Spectrograph (GMOS) at Gemini South in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope. A new study by astronomers Eva Noyola (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) and Karl Gebhardt (University of Texas, Austin) found non-luminous matter at the center of Omega Centauri with roughly 40,000 times the mass of the Sun. This result could lead to an understanding of how such intermediate black holes might evolve into the larger supermassive ones found at the cores of many galaxies; it also suggests that Omega Centauri may once have been a dwarf galaxy.
For more, see the Gemini Observatory Web site.
Illustration Credit: Lynette Cook for Gemini Observatory
April 02, 2008
LSST Mirror Passes High Fire | The LSST primary/tertiary mirror experienced a successful “high fire” over the weekend of March 28-29, reaching a peak temperature of approximately 1165°C (2125°F). The LSST mirror will now anneal and cool gradually to room temperature over the next 100 days in the slowly rotating oven at the UA Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, and will be removed in mid-August to begin grinding and polishing.
Image credit: R. Bertram/Steward Observatory and LSST Corporation
March 19, 2008
LSST Mirror Ready to Fire | More than 51,000 pounds of glass has been loaded into the mold for the primary and tertiary mirrors for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Inset pictures show employees from the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory placing the first pieces of glass into the mold. The glass will be melted and then spun inside the rotating oven to create the 8.4-meter mirror.
Image credit: R. Bertram/Steward Observatory and LSST Corporation
March 13, 2008
Astronomers Find Organics and Water Where New Planets May Grow | John Carr of the Naval Research Laboratory and Joan Najita of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory developed a new technique to measure and analyze the chemical composition of the gases within protoplanetary disks using the infrared spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope. They discovered large amounts of simple organic gases and water vapor in a possible planet-forming region around the infant star AA Tauri, which they report in the March 14 issue of Science magazine. Spitzer Press Release 08-02
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Naval Research Laboratory
March 03, 2008
GLOBE at Night 2008 Going Strong | This dark-skies awareness activity led by NOAO and the GLOBE Program has drawn more than 5,500 measurements from citizen-scientists all over the world since it began on February 25. Get out before March 9 and look up at the constellation Orion (seen here over the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory) to add to the growing database!
Image credit: J. Glaspey and NOAO/AURA/NSF
For more, see the GLOBE at Night web site.
February 19, 2008
Introducing NOAO Currents | Intended as a sparkplug for communication between NOAO and our community, this new electronic newsletter provides updates—and solicits community input—on NOAO observing opportunities and NOAO programs and policies on a more rapid timescale than is possible with the quarterly NOAO-NSO Newsletter. The first issue includes articles on ReSTAR, Gemini, and supernova spectroscopy.
January 31, 2008
Double-Wide Image of Pickering’s Triangle | A new wide-field image of Pickering’s Triangle taken with the National Science Foundation’s Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory was released recently at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. This nebula is part of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant, which includes the famous Veil Nebula. It is located about 1,500 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers estimate that the supernova explosion that produced the nebula occurred between 5,000 to 10,000 years ago; the entire shell stretches more than six full Moons in width across the sky. NOAO Press Release
Image Credit: T.A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker and NOAO/AURA/NSF
January 11, 2008
Dark Matter Discovered in Accretion Disks | Suggests Major Revisions to Concepts of Disk Structure and Luminosity. Observations of the interacting binary star using telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that the disks of hot gas that accumulate around a wide variety of astronomical objects—from degenerate stars in energetic binary systems to supermassive black holes at the hearts of active galaxies—are likely to be much larger than previously believed. Released at the 211th AAS Meeting in Austin. NOAO Press Release 08-02
Image Credit: P. Marenfeld and NOAO/AURA/NSF
January 03, 2008
LSST Receives $30 Million from Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates | The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Project is pleased to announce receipt of two major gifts: $20 million from the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences and $10 million from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Under development since 2000, with work on the telescope design and site being led by NOAO, the LSST is a public-private partnership. These two gifts enable the fabrication of the three large mirrors required for LSST — the first stages of production for the two largest are beginning now at the Mirror Laboratory at the University of Arizona. LSST Press Release [pdf]
Image Credit: LSST Corporation
Links to previous images [172].