Archive for category Astronomy
The coolest video you’ll see today
Posted by Brad in Astronomy, Friday Science Video on 27 August 2010
UKIRT Ain’t Dead Yet!
Doom and gloom notwithstanding, UKIRT isn’t shut down yet. While it’s true that its lifespan is now measured in months instead of years, the staff of UKIRT and JAC continue to provide the excellent support our observers have come to know and expect.
Last night we took over 100 gigabytes of data. While this may sound like a lot, it isn’t by UKIRT’s standards, as the night was shortened due to illness. On a good night UKIRT takes over 200 gigabytes of data. On my bookcase I have 67 LTO-3 tapes, each of which holds about 650GB of WFCAM data. That’s over 43 terabytes of data, and that’s only since September 2008!
Last night we looked at all kinds of different things, from very low mass stars (T dwarfs), a galaxy cluster, a “hot Jupiter” orbiting another star, and another go-around of the UKIDSS Ultra-Deep Survey. There’s a lot of science left to do, and we’re going to get it done, funding cuts be damned!
The Death of UKIRT
Some say that now is not the time to invest, but the bottom line is that the downturn is no time to slow down our investment in science but to build more vigorously for the future. And so we will not allow science to become a victim of the recession – but rather focus on developing it as a key element of our path to recovery.
From 2010-11… a 10% reduction in support for future exploitation grants and a managed cessation of lower priority areas, 25% reduction in the number of new studentships and Fellowships…
…the programme includes the managed withdrawal from a number of projects and programmes including the Gemini telescopes, the NLS, and UKIRT.
- UK Science & Technologies Facility Council, December 15, 2009
The Joint Astronomy Centre, for whom I’ve been working for the past eight years, runs two telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea, the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. The JAC is funded mostly by the UK’s Science & Technology Facilities Council. STFC funds 100% of UKIRT and 55% of JCMT (the other 45% is funded by Canada at 25% and the Netherlands at 20%).
The STFC has had a rather extreme funding crisis over the past couple of years, which has lead to many program prioritizations and studies and cuts. They had put off the majority of the cuts until now, as the funding crisis has come to a head. They need to somehow save £40 million for the 2010-2011 financial year.
They released their Science Programme Prioritisation today. Amongst the press release nonsense was a line about UKIRT:
the programme includes the managed withdrawal from… UKIRT.
There is no note about a timescale, but friends on the inside said STFC had initially stated a pullout date of April 2010 and have since backpedaled.
Obviously this comes as a huge blow to the Joint Astronomy Centre. If UKIRT is closed permanently and removed from Mauna Kea, numerous staff will lose their jobs. UK astronomers will lose access to one of the best infrared telescopes in the world. Hawaii’s economy will take a hit as staff members will likely leave the island, and astronomers from around the world will stop coming to Hawaii for observing runs, spending money while here.
This will probably not save STFC very much money as UKIRT’s budget had already been slashed to roughly £1 million per year, and STFC would have to pay a shedload of money to have UKIRT removed from Mauna Kea. Agreements in place state that the site would have to be restored to a pristine condition. Also, because the JAC runs two telescopes, a high number of staff support both telescopes. This staff would largely remain in place, which would increase the budget of JCMT by about 30%. This cost would undoubtedly be borne by STFC, as the two partner countries would most likely balk at having to clean up STFC’s mess for them.
It’s a decision that makes no scientific sense and makes very little financial sense. Then again, when have we ever expected anything else from STFC?
Time-lapse movies of UKIRT and Mauna Kea
Darren Baskill just finished an observing run at UKIRT, and during his run did some time-lapse photography of UKIRT and Mauna Kea. He has a bunch of movies and photos up on this flickr set, but these two are my favourites:
In this one UKIRT is illuminated first by the setting sun, and then by the moon through the night. You can see stars and clouds drift across the sky, and UKIRT switching from target to target. This looked like a productive night, if a bit cloudy.
The second video shows the control room during the night. Thor Wold is one of our telescope operators whose job is to keep things running smoothly. All the monitors mean there’s a lot of information to keep track of during the night!
After Dark in the Park: “Dark Sacred Nights”
Posted by Brad in Astronomy, Biology, Environment, Hawaii on 17 August 2009
After Dark in the Park is a lecture series put on at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. Starting at 7pm, the free (with suggested $1 donation, and park entrance fees apply) series are on topics important and interesting to people living and working in Hawaii. The ADiP for August 18, 2009 is titled “Dark Sacred Nights”:
For countless millennia, migrating birds, nesting sea turtles and pollinating insects lived in daily cycles of daylight followed by natural dark. Nowadays, thousands of birds and other wildlife perish every year when artificial lights at night disrupt their normal foraging, reproductive, and migratory behaviors. Light pollution wastes electricity, diminishes natural resources and impairs our views of stars and other nighttime wonders. Happily, we can restore dark nights without sacrificing our safety or security. Park ranger Dean Gallagher shares information about cutting edge technology to minimize light pollution with Wildlife Lighting and Dark Sky Friendly Lighting. Learn how we can share the dark night sky with wildlife around us and protect our natural heritage of “Dark Sacred Nights”.
Thirty Meter Telescope coming to Mauna Kea
News from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy:
After careful evaluation and comparison between two outstanding candidate sites, Mauna Kea in Hawai’i and Cerro Armazones in Chile, the
board of directors of the TMT Observatory Corporation has selected Mauna Kea as the preferred site for the Thirty Meter Telescope!
You can read more at the TMT press release.
Weekly Science Video: Kepler Launch
Posted by Brad in Astronomy, Friday Science Video, Weekly Science Video on 06 March 2009
Tonight NASA launched a Delta II rocket with the Kepler Telescope atop it.
Kepler’s mission is to observe 100,000 stars constantly for three and a half years. It’s doing this to watch for dips in brightness caused by a planet passing in front of the star. By observing so many stars for so long, it’s expected that Kepler will about fifty Earth-sized planets with an orbit of about a year in length!
Weekly Science Video: BLAST! The Movie
Posted by Brad in Astronomy, Friday Science Video, Weekly Science Video on 30 January 2009
The Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, or BLAST, was a submillimeter telescope whose goal was to do a wide submillimeter survey of the sky. What makes BLAST different from most telescopes is that it was carried by a huge balloon. It made two flights, one in the Arctic (launched from Sweden and picked up in Canada) and another in Antarctica.
There’s a movie about BLAST called BLAST! The Movie. Here’s its trailer:
A friend of mine, Ed Chapin, worked on BLAST. I didn’t see him anywhere in the trailers, but here’s a picture of him in Antarctica. I see from Gaelen Marsden’s blog that Ed showed up nearer the end, probably to be all rock star and grab all the glory for himself.
You decide where Hubble points!
Ever wanted to have a say in where the Hubble Space Telescope looks? Previously, if you wanted to do this you’d have to be an astronomer and submit an application for time. But now you can vote on which object to point Hubble at!
You’ve got six choices: one star formation region (NGC 6634), two planetary nebulae (NGC 40 and NGC 6072), one spiral galaxy (NGC 5172), one edge-on spiral galaxy (NGC 4289), and one set of interacting galaxies (Arp 274).
You can vote until March 1. After you vote, you can enter a draw to win one of 100 photos of the winning object!
Weekly Science Video: Methane (and life?) on Mars
Posted by Brad in Astronomy, Friday Science Video, Weekly Science Video on 16 January 2009
NASA recently announced the discovery of seasonal plumes of methane on Mars. I’ll let Michael Mumma do some of the explaining:
And now for a few details.
We know the methane was produced recently because methane, made up of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, breaks up easily when struck by ultraviolet light from the Sun. Because it breaks up quickly, if we’re to detect it it must be being replenished somehow.
The hypothesis that the methane is created by subterranean volcanos is on the unlikely side. Mars shows no evidence of recent volcanic activity, and we should be able to detect other gases produced by volcanos such as sulfur dioxide.
Methanogens are bacteria whose waste products include methane. They have been found in many extreme locations on earth, including three kilometers under the ice shield in Greenland and in desert soil samples near the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
This discovery was made through years of observations using the Keck Observatory and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility, both located on Mauna Kea.
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Astronomy category.
recent photos
Recent Comments