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observatory

A Parting Look at 2012 DA14: Was This a Warning Shot from Space?

February 18, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Just as anticipated, on Friday, Feb. 15, asteroid 2012 DA14 passed us by, zipping 27,000 kilometers (17,000 miles) above Earth’s surface — well within the ring of geostationary weather and communications satellites that ring our world. Traveling a breakneck 28,100 km/hr (that’s [...]

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The Paranal and the Shadow of the Earth

December 17, 2012

This beautiful photo, taken by ESO photo ambassador Babak Tafreshi, shows the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope array and VISTA telescope atop the peaks of the Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert. In the distance the Earth’s shadow extends outward toward the horizon, divided from the bluer daytime sky by the dusky pink “Belt of [...]

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Keck Observatory Fires Up MOSFIRE

April 8, 2012

Last week, on April 4, 2012, the W.M. Keck Observatory’s brand-new MOSFIRE instrument opened its infrared-sensing eyes to the Universe for the first time, capturing the image above of a pair of interacting galaxies known as The Antennae. Once fully commissioned and scientific observations begin, MOSFIRE will greatly enhance the imaging abilities of “the world’s [...]

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VISTA View Is Chock Full Of Galaxies

March 22, 2012

See all those tiny points of light in this image? Most of them aren’t stars; they’re entire galaxies, seen by the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA survey telescope located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This is a combination of over 6000 images taken with a total exposure time of 55 hours, and is the widest [...]

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Arecibo Observatory

September 21, 2009

Named after the nearby city in Puerto Rico, the Arecibo Observatory (or Arecibo Radio Telescope) is the largest single-aperture (radio) telescope ever built, 305 m in diameter. Taking advantage of a karst sinkhole, Cornell University built a spherical reflector out of wire mesh, with receivers at the focus suspended by 18 steel cables strung from [...]

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