Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known
Founder: Joseph Barone
Contributors: crookedindifference, bumerangue, propagandery, rocketmagic, rostenbach
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole
First, build a telescope the size of planet Earth.
ALMA Opens Its Eyes
The most powerful millimeter/submillimeter-wavelength telescope in the world opens for business and reveals its first image.
Humanity’s most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has officially opened for astronomers. The first released image, from a telescope still under construction, reveals a view of the Universe that cannot be seen at all by visible-light and infrared telescopes. Thousands of scientists from around the world competed to be the first few researchers to explore some of the darkest, coldest, farthest, and most hidden secrets of the Cosmos with this new astronomical tool.
“We are living in a historic moment for science and particularly for astronomy, and perhaps also for the evolution of humanity, because we start to use the greatest observatory under construction at the moment,” said Thijs de Graauw, ALMA Director.
NASA’s Webb Telescope Completes Mirror-Coating Milestone
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has reached a major milestone in its development. The mirrors that will fly aboard the telescope have completed the coating process at Quantum Coating Inc. in Moorestown, N.J.
The telescope’s mirrors have been coated with a microscopically thin layer of gold, selected for its ability to properly reflect infrared light from the mirrors into the observatory’s science instruments. The coating allows the Webb telescope’s “infrared eyes” to observe extremely faint objects in infrared light. Webb’s mission is to observe the most distant objects in the universe.
ESO plans new telescope able to see Earth-size planets
The E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope, depicted above) would be the biggest telescope on Earth and would have a 131 feet (40 meters) mirror. It would be the only equipment able to see planets as big as Earth orbiting near stars, says Dutch astronomer and ESO director, Tim de Zeeuw.
It would cost €1 billion and all 14 member countries of ESO would finance it. Meeting of all members is scheduled to this year, the E-ELT construction is expected to be aproved by voting. If aproved, construction should begin in December and last for 10 years.
Current biggest telescopes are 8 to 10 meters wide (26 ft to 32ft), so the E-ELT would be a major improvement on land telescopes.
Today 402 years ago (August 25, 1609) Galileo Galilei introduce his telescope to the Venetian Lawmakers. While Galileo did not invent the telescope, his was the first to be used for astronomy. In fact, less than 5 months after he introduced the telescope, he discovered three moons traveling around Jupiter and just a few days later he discovered the fourth one.
His observations of the satellites of Jupiter created a revolution in astronomy that reverberates to this day: a planet with smaller planets orbiting it did not conform to the principles of Aristotelian Cosmology, which held that all heavenly bodies should circle the Earth, and many astronomers and philosophers initially refused to believe that Galileo could have discovered such a thing.
Fast forward to February 11, 2010; NASA Solar Dynamics was launched into Space - the most sophisticated solar observatory ever built. We have come long ways and today we should remember and thank Galileo for looking to the stars!
Source: NASA SDO.
How Far Into the Past Can Our Telescopes See?
Every time we point a telescope at the sky we’re looking into the past. This chart shows how far we can go. Right now, Hubble’s Ultra Deep Field IR can see as far as 480 million years after the Big Bang.
The James Webb Space Telescope will allow us to see 200 million years after the Big Bang. In a cosmic scale, that’s almost like looking at the beginning of all this starstuff we call the Universe. I wonder if we will ever be able to get to the point of watching the Big Bang itself. If that can be watched, anyway.
An Astronomer’s Field of Dreams
An innovative new radio telescope array under construction in central New Mexico will eventually harness the power of more than 13,000 antennas and provide a fresh eye to the sky. The antennas, which resemble droopy ceiling fans, form the Long Wavelength Array, designed to survey the sky from horizon to horizon over a wide range of frequencies.
The University of New Mexico leads the project, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., provides the advanced digital electronic systems, which represent a major component of the observatory.
The APEX in Chile
APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, is a collaboration between Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) at 50%, Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) at 23%, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at 27% to construct and operate a modified ALMA prototype antenna as a single dish on the high altitude site of Llano Chajnantor. The telescope was manufactured by VERTEX Antennentechnik in Duisburg, Germany.
Observing with APEX allows us to study cold dust and gas in our own Milky Way and in distant galaxies. Tracing the thermal continuum emission and analyzing high frequency spectral lines improve our understanding of the structure and chemistry of planetary atmospheres, dying stars, regions of star formation as well as distant starburst galaxies. We can address issues from the vast scales of the structure of the Universe down to the physics and chemistry of comets.
Blurry Nebula Image Marks Success for Flying Telescope, NASA Says
After months of calibration and testing, NASA’s flying telescope made its first excursion this morning, and the space agency is looking forward to analyzing the results. But, um, isn’t this sort of blurry?
The above image is a snapshot of the Orion nebula, taken with a special camera optimized for mid-infrared light. No telescope on the ground or in space can make observations in that range, so although this picture is a little fuzzy, it’s actually full of useful information, according to NASA.
Astronomers Probe ‘Sandbar’ Between Islands of Galaxies
Astronomers have caught sight of an unusual galaxy that has illuminated new details about a celestial “sandbar” connecting two massive islands of galaxies. The research was conducted in part with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
These “sandbars,” or filaments, are known to span vast distances between galaxy clusters and form a lattice-like structure known as the cosmic web. Though immense, these filaments are difficult to see and study in detail. Two years ago, Spitzer’s infrared eyes revealed that one such intergalactic filament containing star-forming galaxies ran between the galaxy clusters called Abell 1763 and Abell 1770.
The life-sized James Webb Space Telescope model sits in front of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, in Dublin, Ireland. Credit: Richard Bent, Northrop Grumman Space Technology (via Space Fellowship)
The Hubble Space Telescope was released in space in 1990, and since then it captured thousands of stunning pictures. These pictures are public and you can find them in various sources. We collected 25 amazing examples, with galaxies, nebulae, stars and maybe some planets in that big black space. Enjoy. Photos: HubbleSite, NASA
Into the Looking Glass
Image Credit: NASA
Recently, technicians at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., completed a series of cryogenic tests on six James Webb Space Telescope beryllium mirror segments at the center’s X-ray & Cryogenic Facility. During testing, the mirrors were subjected to extreme temperatures dipping to -415 degrees Fahrenheit, permitting engineers to measure in extreme detail how the shape of the mirror changes as it cools.
The Webb telescope has 18 mirrors, each of which will be tested twice in the Center’s X-ray & Cryogenic Facility to ensure that the mirror will maintain its shape in a space environment — once with bare polished beryllium and then again after a thin coating of gold is applied.
The cryogenic test gauges how each mirror changes temperature and shape over a range of operational temperatures in space. This helps predict how well the telescope will image infrared sources.
The mirrors are designed to stay cold to allow scientists to observe the infrared light they reflect using a telescope and instruments optimized to detect this light. Warm objects give off infrared light, or heat. If the Webb telescope mirror is too warm, the faint infrared light from distant galaxies may be lost in the infrared glow of the mirror itself. Thus, the Webb telescope’s mirrors need to operate in a deep cold or cryogenic state, at around -379 degree Fahrenheit.
James Webb Space Telescope Sunshield Design Achieves Significant Landmark
Photo of the 1/3 scale sunshield membranes undergoing final inspection at the Nexolve facility in Hunstville, Ala. Credit: Nexvolve
