telescopes | Common News Update

May192021 by adminNo Comments

NASA eyes moon’s dark side for astronomy, new telescopes

Science

May 19 (UPI) -- NASA scientists, as well as astronomers around the world, plan to install lunar observatories in the next few years to peer into the universe's ancient past -- just after the Big Bang. Science equipment headed to the moon already includes a spectrometer built for launch in early 2022, known as ROLSES, which will study how sunlight charges the slight lunar atmosphere. Advertisement The acronym includes the word "sheath," which refers to a field of energy created by sunlight reflecting from the bright lunar surface. And NASA scientists are formulating plans for observatories on the far side of the moon, where darkness and clear sightlines could yield new discoveries about the universe before stars existed. One bold plan to build a telescope in a lunar crater, the Lunar Crat...

Mar52020 by adminNo Comments

Europe’s major telescopes ‘can meet satellite challenge’

Science

Europe's flagship telescopes will be "moderately affected" by the new satellite mega-constellations now being launched, according to a new study.Having thousands more bright objects in the sky will create inconvenience and extra cost, but the idea that astronomy faces some kind of a "cliff edge" is not correct, says Olivier Hainaut.He's calculated how observing time might be limited by having 26,000 additional spacecraft in orbit.And it's manageable, he believes.Dr Hainaut works for the European Southern Observatory (ESO) organisation which operates world-class facilities in Chile's Atacama Desert, including the VLT (Very Large Telescope) and the forthcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).Neith...

Feb282020 by adminNo Comments

Telescopes detect ‘biggest explosion since Big Bang’

Science

Scientists have detected evidence of a colossal explosion in space - five times bigger than anything observed before. The huge release of energy is thought to have emanated from a supermassive black hole some 390 million light years from Earth.The eruption is said to have left a giant dent in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster.Researchers reported their findings in The Astrophysical Journal."I've tried to put this explosion into human terms and it's really, really difficult," co-author Melanie Johnston-Hollitt told BBC News. "The best I can do is tell you that if this explosion continued to occur over the 240 million years of the outburst - which it probably didn't, but anyway - it'd be like setting off 20 billion, billion megaton TNT...

Jul32019 by adminNo Comments

Hubble, Spitzer telescopes conduct chemical survey of mid-size exoplanet

Science

July 2 (UPI) -- For the first time, scientists, with the help of a pair of NASA space telescopes, have identified the chemical signature of the atmosphere surrounding a mid-sized exoplanet. In size, mass and composition, Gliese 3470 b is like a cross between Earth and Neptune -- a rocky core surrounded by a thick layer of gas. The exoplanet weighs 12.6 Earth masses. Neptune by comparison, weighs 17 Earth masses. Mid-sized planets like Gliese 3470 b are common in other planetary systems, but are absent in our own solar system. Despite their ubiquity, researchers have been unable to confirm the chemical composition of a mini-Neptune exoplanet. By characterizing the makeup of Gliese 3470 b's atmosphere, scientists may be able to determine how medium-sized planets form. "This is a big disco...

May62019 by adminNo Comments

New telescopes to help astronomers acquire sharper black hole images

Science

May 6 (UPI) -- Earlier this year, scientists captured the first up-close image of a black hole. Now, researchers are working on plans to produce even sharper images of the cosmic phenomena. Scientists published their plans for acquiring better black hole images this week in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The plans involve the deployment of two or three coordinated orbital radio telescopes. To showcase the power of their planned constellation of observatories, dubbed the Event Horizon Imager, researchers developed a model to simulate the telescopes' image-making abilities. "There are lots of advantages to using satellites instead of permanent radio telescopes on Earth, as with the Event Horizon Telescope," Freek Roelofs, a PhD candidate at Radboud University in the Netherlands, s...