Astronomical Stargazer Thread

[Corinthian]

we need a name for object 2007 OR10:

 

 

Planet Mcplanetface.

[Ivanhoe]

 

we need a name for object 2007 OR10:

 

 

Planet Mcplanetface.

 

 

We all knew lawyers are evil through and through, but this would make even ol' Beelzebub groan.

 

Can't we just go with "Death Star" or "Tatooine?"

[Panzermann]

ESO continues its tradition of boring names for its instruments:

 

eso1617 Organisation Release

ESO Signs Largest Ever Ground-based Astronomy

Contract for E-ELT Dome and Telescope Structure

25 May 2016

 

At a ceremony in Garching bei München, Germany on 25 May 2016, ESO signed the contract with the ACe Consortium, consisting of Astaldi, Cimolai and the nominated sub-contractor EIE Group, for the construction of the dome and telescope structure of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This is the largest contract ever awarded by ESO and also the largest contract ever in ground-based astronomy. This occasion saw the unveiling of the construction design of the E-ELT. Construction of the dome and telescope structure will now commence.

The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) , with a main mirror 39 metres in diameter, will be the largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world: truly the worlds biggest eye on the sky. It will be constructed in northern Chile, on a site that has already been prepared.

The contract to build the telescopes dome and structure was signed by ESOs Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, the Chairman of Astaldi , Paolo Astaldi, and the President of Cimolai, Luigi Cimolai. ESO was delighted to welcome Italys Minister of Education, Universities and Research, H.E. Stefania Giannini, to the ceremony, which was also attended by the Italian Consul General in Munich, Renato Cianfarani, the ESO Council President, Patrick Roche, and the Italian ESO Council Delegates, Nicolò DAmico (who is also President of INAF) and Matteo Pardo, Scientific Attaché at the Italian Embassy in Berlin. The President of EIE , Gianpietro Marchiori, and other guests and representatives of the consortium were also present.

The contract covers the design, manufacture, transport, construction, on-site assembly and verification of the dome and telescope structure. With an approximate value of 400 million euros, it is the largest contract ever awarded by ESO and the largest contract ever in ground-based astronomy.

The E-ELT dome and telescope structure will take telescope engineering into new territory.

The contract includes not only the enormous 85-metre-diameter rotating dome, with a total mass of around 5000 tonnes, but also the telescope mounting and tube structure, with a total moving mass of more than 3000 tonnes. Both of these structures are by far the largest ever built for an optical/infrared telescope and dwarf all existing ones. The dome is almost 80 metres high and its footprint is comparable in area to a football pitch.

The E-ELT is being built on Cerro Armazones, a 3000-metre peak about 20 kilometres from ESOs Paranal Observatory. The access road and leveling of the summit have already been completed and work on the dome is expected to start on site in 2017.

Tim de Zeeuw, ESOs Director General said: "The E-ELT will produce discoveries that we simply cannot imagine today, and it will inspire people around the world to think about science, technology and our place in the Universe. Today's signature is a key step towards delivering the E-ELT in 2024."

Paolo Astaldi, Chairman of Astaldi added: This project is truly visionary, both in what it represents for the field of astronomy and for construction and engineering. Astaldi and our project partners, Cimolai and EIE Group, are extremely proud to have been selected by ESO through their call for tender to help make their vision a reality. Astaldi is renowned for delivering its best-in-class technical skills, quality construction and strong execution, and we will put the full force of our core strengths behind this project. It is with great excitement that I sign a contract of such astronomical ambition.

Luigi Cimolai, President of Cimolai, said: We are honoured and grateful that our company has been given the opportunity to take part in this technically advanced astronomical challenge.

The European Extremely Large Telescope will demand a high degree of quality in engineering and construction and I believe this will definitely contribute to further increase our ability to develop projects of greater and greater complexity.

Many other aspects of the construction of the E-ELT are also moving forward rapidly. ESO has already signed agreements for the construction of the first-light instruments MICADO , HARMONI and METIS , as well as the MAORY adaptive optics system for the E-ELT. Contracts for the telescopes huge secondary mirror will be signed in the near future.

The light-collecting area of the E-ELT will be bigger than all existing optical research telescopes combined and its adaptive optics system will provide images about 15 times sharper than those from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope at the same wavelength. It offers numerous possibilities for technology and engineering spin-offs, technology transfer and technology contracting. The new contract demonstrates that the E-ELT has the potential to be a powerhouse for economic development, offering contractors in ESOs Member States an opportunity to lead major projects at an international level.

 

More information

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the worlds most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the worlds most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the worlds largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become the worlds biggest eye on the sky.

 

http://www.eso.org/public/unitedkingdom/news/eso1617/?lang

 

nice size comparison images behind the link

Edited May 26, 2016 by Panzermann

[DB]

I propose that the next one after this be called the Unfeasibly Large Telescope.

 

After that, Ludicrously large Telescope comes to mind, although Elon Musk may steal that one.

 

What about Scopey McScopeface?

 

Sorry.

[Corinthian]

Ludicrously Large Telescope first as that is achievable.

 

Then Unfeasibly Large Telescope for the next bigger one, which will be true to its name with the funding issues and several threats of cancelations which will end up being built and commissioned overbudget and with flaws in it making it unfeasible for intended use.

 

Scopey McScopeface-in-Space will replace Hubble and the Webb telescope.

[Ivanhoe]

Very Large Telescope

Extremely Large Telescope

Ridiculously Large Telescope

Absurdly Large Telescope

Ludicrously Large Telescope

[Ivanhoe]

Moot point, though;

 

http://spacecoastdaily.com/2016/05/nasas-solar-dynamics-observatory-focuses-on-huge-hole-on-sun/

 

 

Soundtrack

[Mobius]

I propose that the next one after this be called the Unfeasibly Large Telescope.

 

After that, Ludicrously large Telescope comes to mind, although Elon Musk may steal that one.

 

What about Scopey McScopeface?

 

Sorry.

Hopefully Chile will remain a stable country.

[Panzermann]

Hopefully Chile will remain a stable country.

I don't think ESO is much at risk. They bring jobs and money into what are poor and empty areas anyway. I doubt that any government would risk this safe and easy income.

[Soren Ras]

I spent a couple of very interesting weeks at La Silla at one of the ESO observatories collecting data for my master's thesis back in '97, and my impression is that it is a very nice deal for Chile. Not only do the foreigners generally hole up on remote mountain tops and don't bother the locals, they also construct great infrastructure to allow the scientists to get there. I recall after landing at a small airport in a tiny aircraft coming in from Santiago, I rode out of town in a rental car. Pretty soon the road deteriorated to what was essentially a dirt track, until after about 30 minutes I had to pull onto the road leading to La Silla. And suddenly I was on what was for all intents and purposes, my very own brand-new autobahn, built by German ESO engineers to make the approach easier. That continued about 50 kilometers and you could see a lot of local construction going on now that there was a new road in place.

 

And ESO is pretty happy about Chile being a far saner and stable place than many other countries.

 

--

Soren

[Mike Steele]

I spent a couple of very interesting weeks at La Silla at one of the ESO observatories collecting data for my master's thesis back in '97, and my impression is that it is a very nice deal for Chile. Not only do the foreigners generally hole up on remote mountain tops and don't bother the locals, they also construct great infrastructure to allow the scientists to get there. I recall after landing at a small airport in a tiny aircraft coming in from Santiago, I rode out of town in a rental car. Pretty soon the road deteriorated to what was essentially a dirt track, until after about 30 minutes I had to pull onto the road leading to La Silla. And suddenly I was on what was for all intents and purposes, my very own brand-new autobahn, built by German ESO engineers to make the approach easier. That continued about 50 kilometers and you could see a lot of local construction going on now that there was a new road in place.

 

And ESO is pretty happy about Chile being a far saner and stable place than many other countries.

 

--

Soren

Chile is a Capitalist Hellhole (shhhhh) were as Venezuela is A Socialist Paradise with so much to offer......

[Panzermann]

Venezuela is worthless to ESO. No clear skies in the tropical climate with its clouds and rocket launches are done next door in Guyana.

[swerve]

I propose that the next one after this be called the Unfeasibly Large Telescope.

Reminds me of Buster Gonad.

[BansheeOne]

Shot from ISS crossing over Kiribati, showing atmospheric airglow.

 

[Panzermann]

another one. Really big this time:

June 13, 2016

New Planet Is Largest Discovered That Orbits Two

Suns

 

If you cast your eyes toward the constellation Cygnus, youll be looking in the direction of the largest planet yet discovered around a double-star system. Its too faint to see with the naked eye, but a team led by astronomers from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and San Diego State University (SDSU) in California, used NASA's Kepler Space Telescope to identify the new planet, Kepler-1647b.

The discovery was announced today in San Diego at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The research has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal with Veselin Kostov, a NASA Goddard postdoctoral fellow, as lead author.

 

Kepler-1647 is 3,700 light-years away and approximately 4.4 billion years old, roughly the same age as Earth. The stars are similar to the sun, with one slightly larger than our home star and the other slightly smaller. The planet has a mass and radius nearly identical to that of Jupiter, making it the largest transiting circumbinary planet ever found.

Planets that orbit two stars are known as circumbinary planets, or sometimes Tatooine planets, after Luke Skywalkers home world in Star Wars. Using Kepler data, astronomers search for slight dips in brightness that hint a planet might be passing or transiting in front of a star, blocking a tiny amount of the stars light.

But finding circumbinary planets is much harder than finding planets around single stars, said SDSU astronomer William Welsh, one of the papers coauthors. The transits are not regularly spaced in time and they can vary in duration and even depth.

 

Its a bit curious that this biggest planet took so long to confirm, since it is easier to find big planets than small ones, said SDSU astronomer Jerome Orosz, a coauthor on the study. But it is because its orbital period is so long.

 

The planet takes 1,107 days just over three years to orbit its host stars, the longest period of any confirmed transiting exoplanet found so far. The planet is also much further away from its stars than any other circumbinary planet, breaking with the tendency for circumbinary planets to have close-in orbits. Interestingly, its orbit puts the planet with in the so-called habitable zonethe range of distances from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet

Like Jupiter, however, Kepler-1647b is a gas giant, making the planet unlikely to host life. Yet if the planet has large moons, they could potentially be suitable for life.

 

Habitability aside, Kepler-1647b is important because it is the tip of the iceberg of a theoretically predicted population of large, long-period circumbinary planets, said Welsh.

Once a candidate planet is found, researchers employ advanced computer programs to determine if it really is a planet. It can be a grueling process.

 

Laurance Doyle, a coauthor on the paper and astronomer at the SETI Institute, noticed a transit back in 2011. But more data and several years of analysis were needed to confirm the transit was indeed caused by a circumbinary planet. A network of amateur astronomers in the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope "Follow-Up Network provided additional observations that helped the researchers estimate the planets mass.

 

 

 

For more information about the Kepler mission, please see:

www.nasa.gov/kepler

A preprint of the paper can be found at:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.00189v2

High-resolution artwork can be obtained at:

http://go.sdsu.edu/kepler/

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/new-planet-is-largest-discovered-that-orbits-two-suns

 

 

Tattooine planet? Why this obsession with a planet that is considered the most boring, most backwater and criminal planet in the slice? There are definitely more interesting planets with more then one central star in fiction.

 

(ya I know, cause of the movies...)

Edited June 14, 2016 by Panzermann

[Corinthian]

 

 

 

Tattooine planet? Why this obsession with a planet that is considered the most boring, most backwater and criminal planet in the slice? There are definitely more interesting planets with more then one central star in fiction.

 

(ya I know, cause of the movies...)

 

 

WEMADEIT!

[Ivanhoe]

The shelling begins;

 

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-mysterious-object-just-made-a-dent-in-one-of-saturn-s-rings

[DB]

Uh-oh. The fithp are on their way.

[Corinthian]

Gotta start building Orion.

[Panzermann]

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-extends-hubble-space-telescope-science-operations-contract

 

NASA Extends Hubble Space Telescope Science

Operations Contract

 

NASA is contractually extending science operations for its Hubble Space Telescope an additional five years. The agency awarded a sole source contract extension Thursday to the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy for continued Hubble science operations support at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

This action will extend the period of performance from July 1 through June 30, 2021. The contract value will increase by approximately $196.3 million for a total contract value of $2.03 billion.

This contract extension covers the work necessary to continue the science program of the Hubble mission by the Space Telescope Science Institute. The support includes the products and services required to execute science system engineering, science ground system development, science operations, science research, grants management and public outreach support for Hubble and data archive support for missions in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.

 

After the final space shuttle servicing mission to the telescope in 2009, Hubble is better than ever. Hubble is expected to continue to provide valuable data into the 2020s, securing its place in history as an outstanding general purpose observatory in areas ranging from our solar system to the distant universe.

In 2018, NASAs James Webb Space Telescope will be launched into space as the premier observatory of the next decade, serving astronomers worldwide to build on Hubbles legacy of discoveries and help unlock some of the biggest mysteries of the universe.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

-end-

[Panzermann]

Maybe lots and lots of quiet black holes in the galaxy. hmm, maybe that is the theorised dark matter astronomers are missing?

 

Clandestine Black Hole May Represent New Population

 

Astronomers have combined data from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and the National Science Foundations Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to conclude that a peculiar source of radio waves thought to be a distant galaxy is actually a nearby binary star system containing a low-mass star and a black hole. This identification suggests there may be a vast number of black holes in our Galaxy that have gone unnoticed until now.

For about two decades, astronomers have known about an object called VLA J213002.08+120904 (VLA J2130+12 for short). Although it is close to the line of sight to the globular cluster M15, most astronomers had thought that this source of bright radio waves was probably a distant galaxy.

Thanks to recent distance measurements with an international network of radio telescopes, including the EVN (European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network) telescopes, the NSFs Green Bank Telescope and Arecibo Observatory, astronomers realized that VLA J2130+12 is at a distance of 7,200 light years, showing that it is well within our own Milky Way galaxy and about five times closer than M15. A deep image from Chandra reveals it can only be giving off a very small amount of X-rays, while recent VLA data indicates the source remains bright in radio waves.

 

This new study indicates that VLA J2130+12 is a black hole a few times the mass of our Sun that is very slowly pulling in material from a companion star. At this paltry feeding rate, VLA J2130+12 was not previously flagged as a black hole since it lacks some of the telltale signs that black holes in binaries typically display.

Usually, we find black holes when they are pulling in lots of material. Before falling into the black hole this material gets very hot and emits brightly in X-rays, said Bailey Tetarenko of the University of Alberta, Canada, who led the study. This one is so quiet that its practically a stealth black hole.

This is the first time a black hole binary system outside of a globular cluster has been initially discovered while it is in such a quiet state.

Hubble observations identified VLA J2130+12 with a star having only about one-tenth to one-fifth the mass of the Sun. The observed radio brightness and the limit on the X-ray brightness from Chandra allowed the researchers to rule out other possible interpretations, such as an ultra-cool dwarf star, a neutron star, or a white dwarf pulling material away from a companion star.

Because this study only covered a very small patch of sky, the implication is that there should be many of these quiet black holes around the Milky Way. The estimates are that tens of thousands to millions of these black holes could exist within our Galaxy, about three to thousands of times as many as previous studies have suggested.

Unless we were incredibly lucky to find one source like this in a small patch of the sky, there must be many more of these black hole binaries in our Galaxy than we used to think, said co-author Arash Bahramian, also of the University of Alberta.

There are other implications of finding that VLA J2130+12 is relatively near to us.

Some of these undiscovered black holes could be closer to the Earth than we previously thought, said Robin Arnason, a co-author from Western University, Canada However theres no need to worry as even these black holes would still be many light years away from Earth.

Sensitive radio and X-ray surveys covering large regions of the sky will need to be performed to uncover more of this missing population.

If, like many others, this black hole was formed in the plane of the Milky Way's disk, it would have needed a large kick at birth to launch it to its current position about 3,000 light years above the plane of the Galaxy.

 

These results appear in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

Read More from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/clandestine-black-hole-may-represent-new-population.html

 

 

"clandestine black holes"

[Panzermann]

the paper on arxiv: The first low-mass black hole X-ray

binary identified in quiescence outside

of a globular cluster

Edited June 28, 2016 by Panzermann

[Panzermann]

Ha! NASA agrees with me!

 

NASA Scientist Suggests Possible Link Between Primordial Black Holes and Dark Matter

[lucklucky]

Wonderful

 

Galilean moons of Jupiter(Zeus) were named after his 4 mistresses: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto by Simon Marius a contemporary of Galileo.

 

Now 400 years later spacecraft Juno is arriving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft). In 5 July entered Jupiter orbit.

 

Juno was Jupiter's wife...

[Corinthian]

Jupiter is in deep shit now.