Observatories | Universe Today

Quick! Grab a pair of red and green 3-D glasses and slap them on to watch this great time lapse video of the Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory, high in the Atacama Desert in Chile. It shows a complete night at the observatory, and you can see the four 8m telescopes and the four 1.8m telescopes of the VLT working, all in 3-D. The video comes from the handiwork of astrophotographer and head Optics Engineer on the VLT, Stéphane Guisard. If that name sounds familiar, Stéphane has recently been working with ESO and fellow astrophotographer Serge Brunier on the GigaGalaxy Zoom project. Click this link to go directly to GigaGalaxy Zoom, or read one of our previous articles about them here. It was made by using two cameras taking pictures simultaneously, which were combined to create an anaglyph time lapse movie. Two notes about the movie: the telescopes and domes were lit by the moonlight, and the International Space Station crosses the sky during the very first seconds of the movie.
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What happens when you mix a large group of kids with a telescope that talks? Chances are, you've got a recipe for loads of astronomy fun. Thanks to a generous donation of a Celestron SkyScout 90 telescope and more, the Outreach Team at Warren Rupp Observatory soon found out what it was like to take on more than 300 guests during a recent public night and just how valuable certain pieces of astronomy education equipment can be. Come on inside where it's dark and let me show you what we've found… Read more…

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The wildfires near Los Angeles have spread to over 100,000 acres. The Los Angeles Times reported that the fire had burned 74 structures and remained out of control, spreading both west and north. As of 6:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on August 31, some 12,000 homes were threatened. Fire fighters struggled to save the Mt. Wilson Observatory from the encroaching fire. Today, fire fighters set controlled backfires in effort to remove the closest vegetation to the various telescope structures. See below for a labeled image of the structures on Mt. Wilson amid smoke from the fires, courtesy of Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society, along with more satellite, ground and helicopter images from the fires.
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The search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth. No human is thought to have ever been there, but it’s expected to yield images of the heavens three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground.

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The Herschel telescope has now turned on all its instruments, taking a few "first light" images with each instrument of galaxies, star-forming regions and dying stars. Herschel astronomers said they were "staggered" by the results, saying "these observations show that Herschel’s instruments are working beyond expectations. They promise a mission of rich discoveries for waiting astronomers." Above are images taken with Herschel’s Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE, of two galaxies, M66 and M74. The galaxies showed up prominently, providing astronomers with their best images yet at these wavelengths. And what's that in the background? Other more distant galaxies!
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Supernovae are extremely luminous explosions of stars and cause bursts of radiation that often outshine an entire galaxy. So, when a supernova exploded last year in a nearby galaxy, why didn't we see it? Was this an undercover supernova; a top-secret, covert event? Well, kind of. The secret is in the dust.
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Caltech has announced it will begin decommissioning the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) in Hawaii starting in 2016.

Caltech says the 23-year-old telescope is being replaced by the next generation of radio telescope, the Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope (CCAT), to be located in Chile.

"The timing of this works very nicely," says Tom Phillips, director of the CSO and Altair Professor of Physics in Caltech's Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. "The international community of astronomers that rely on CSO will have a seamless transition as CCAT comes online just as CSO is decommissioned."

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The European Space Agency announced today that the Herschel and Planck spacecraft will now launch on May 14. Liftoff had been delayed to allow time for additional checks on the Ariane 5 ECA launch vehicle. The two spacecraft are launching together in what was originally a cost saving move, but the complexity of preparing two spacecraft at once has caused frequent delays and cost overruns. However, now that the launch is near, hopefully the cutting-edge technologies included in both spacecraft will soon pay off in new discoveries astronomy and cosmology.
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Astronomy organizations in the United States, Australia and Korea have signed on to build the largest ground-based telescope in the world – unless another team gets there first. The Giant Magellan Telescope, or GMT, will have the resolving power of a single 24.5-meter (80-foot) primary mirror, which will make it three times more powerful than any of the Earth's existing ground-based optical telescopes. Its domestic partners include the Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, Texas A & M University, the University of Arizona, and the University of Texas at Austin. Although the telescope has been in the works since 2003, the formal collaboration was announced Friday.
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On November 11, 1572 Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and other skywatchers observed what they thought was a new star. A bright object appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia, outshining even Venus, and it stayed there for several months until it faded from view. What Brahe actually saw was a supernova, a rare event where the violent death of a star sends out an extremely bright outburst of light and energy. The remains of this event can still be seen today as Tycho’s supernova remnant. Recently, a group of astronomers used the Subaru Telescope to attempt a type of time travel by observing the same light that Brahe saw back in the 16th century. They looked at 'light echoes' from the event in an effort to learn more about the ancient supernova.
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A new image of Omega Centauri shows the globular cluster glittering away as one of the finest jewels of the southern hemisphere night sky. It contains millions of stars and is located about 17,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus, and sparkles at magnitude 3.7, appearing nearly as large as the full moon on the southern night sky. Visible with the unaided eye from a clear, dark observing site, when seen through even a modest amateur telescope, the Omega Centauri can be seen as incredible, densely packed sphere of glittering stars. But when astronomers use a professional telescopes, they are able to uncover amazing secrets of this beautiful globular cluster.
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Last week's announcement of a puzzling and unknown source of high energy cosmic rays bombarding the Earth is now joined by another discovery of two sources of unexpected cosmic rays from nearby regions of space. A Los Alamos National Laboratory cosmic-ray observatory has seen for the first time two distinct hot spots that appear to be bombarding Earth with an excess of cosmic rays. "These two results may be due to the same, or different, astrophysical phenomenon, said Jordan Goodman, principal investigator for the Milagro observatory, commenting on last week's announcement by the ATIC experiment and the new discovery by his team. "However, they both suggest the presence of high-energy particle acceleration in the vicinity of the earth. Our new findings point to general locations for the localized excesses of cosmic-ray protons." The cosmic rays appear to originate from an area in the sky near the constellation Orion.
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Observing a stars brightness pulsate may reveal its internal structure say researchers using the Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) observatory. The highly sensitive orbital telescope can detect tiny variations in a distant star's brightness, leading astronomers into a new field of stellar seismology called "asteroseismology."

Seismology is more commonly used by scientists on Earth to see how waves travel through the terrestrial crust, thereby revealing the structure of the material below us. Even solar physicists use the method of helioseismology to understand the interior of our Sun by observing its wobble. Now, by observing the slight changes in stellar brightness, it is possible to remotely probe deep into the inner workings of a distant star…
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Understanding how stars form is critical to astronomers. If we can gain a better understanding of how intermediate-size infant stars grow, we can begin to answer some of the most perplexing questions hanging over the evolution of our own Solar System. Unfortunately, the nearest star forming regions are about 500 light years away, meaning that astronomers cannot simply use traditional optical telescopes to peer into star-forming disks of gas and dust. So, researchers working with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) are combining high resolution spectroscopic and interferometry observations to give the most detailed view yet of infant stars eating away at their proto-planetary disk, blasting out violent stellar winds as they do so…
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In May 2000, Australian astrophysicist Dr Rodney David Marks died from acute methanol poisoning whilst stationed at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. He was a 32 year old "brilliant and witty" scientist, whose death shocked his family and friends. The media jumped on this story, citing the tragedy as the "first South Pole murder," but there was little evidence to suggest anyone else was involved. Unfortunately it appears that New Zealand investigators have been hampered by a lack of co-operation by the organizations that run the facility, so it remains unclear whether Marks' death was the result of foul play or tragic accident…
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