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December 29, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | The Helix Nebula from Blanco and Hubble : : : : : : December 17, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | Helix Nebula’s New Look : : : : : : December 16, 2004
A New Twist On an Old Nebula | Looks can be deceiving, especially when it comes to celestial objects like galaxies and nebulas. These objects are so far away that astronomers cannot see their three-dimensional structure. The Helix Nebula, for example, resembles a doughnut in colorful images. Earlier images of this complex object—the gaseous envelope ejected by a dying, sun-like star—did not allow astronomers to precisely interpret its structure. Now, a team of astronomers using observations from several observatories, including NOAO’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, has established that the Helix’s structure is even more perplexing. Their evidence suggests that the Helix consists of two gaseous disks nearly perpendicular to each other. HST Press Release : : : : : : December 13, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | Announcing Comet Machholz : : : : : : December 6, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | A Rose is a Rose, Even in Space : : : : : : November 27, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | NGC 2683: Spiral Edge-On : : : : : : November 23, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | Leonid Meteors Streak : : : : : : October 24, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | Inside the Eagle Nebula : : : : : : October 22, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | Reflections of Orion : : : : : : October 11, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | Swirls of Star Formation : : : : : : October 6, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | N11: A Giant Ring of Emission Nebulas : : : : : : October 5, 2004
Mystery Object Neither Star Nor Brown Dwarf | Astronomers including Steve Howell of NOAO-WIYN have used the Gemini North and Keck II telescopes to peer inside a violent binary star system named EF Eridanus to find that one of the interacting stars has lost so much mass to its partner that it has regressed to a strange, inert body resembling no known star type. Unable to sustain nuclear fusion at its core and doomed to orbit with its much more energetic white dwarf partner for millions of years, the dead star is essentially a new, indeterminate type of stellar object. Gemini Press Release : : : : : : September 21, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | M24: A Sagittarius Starscape : : : : : : September 21, 2004Space.com Image Gallery | Kitt Peak Visitor Center : : : : : : September 16, 2004
Foreseeing the Sun’s Fate | For more than 400 years, astronomers both professional and amateur have taken a special interest in observing Mira stars, a class of variable red giants famous for pulsations that last for 80-1,000 days and cause their apparent brightness to vary by a factor of ten times or more during a cycle. An international team of astronomers led by Guy Perrin from the Paris Observatory/LESIA (Meudon, France) and Stephen Ridgway from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (Tucson, Arizona, USA) has used interferometric techniques to observe the close environments of five Mira stars, and were surprised to find that the stars are surrounded by a nearly transparent shell of water vapor, and possibly carbon monoxide and other molecules. By penetrating through this layer using the combined light of several telescopes, the team found that Mira stars are likely only half as large as formerly believed. A & A Press Release 1098 : : : : : : September 15, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | That Natal Glow : : : : : : September 8, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | A Cosmic Quintet : : : : : : September 7, 2004Spitzer Space Telescope | Spitzer Arrives at Scene of Galactic Collision : : : : : : September 5, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy in Dust and Stars : : : : : : September 2, 2004HubbleSite | Images for "A Bright Supernova in the Nearby Galaxy NGC 2403" : : : : : : August 26, 2004
A Kitt Peak Observer’s PhotoJournal | Elizabeth Warner, director of the University of Maryland’s campus observatory and part of the NASA Deep Impact mission outreach team, participated in a July 2004 “summer school” for university graduate students, as part of a larger partnership between NOAO and the university, which is located in College Park, MD. Elizabeth (center, in white shirt) assembled an interesting diary and photographic record of her experience, including some stunning pictures of lightning storms near Kitt Peak. See her online journal to learn more about the excitement and challenges of observing with world-class telescopes. : : : : : : August 24, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | Partly Cloudy, Cosmically Speaking : : : : : : August 18, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | Lightning on Earth : : : : : : August 5, 2004
UNC receives grants for new telescopes in Chile; remote access will benefit state schools, students | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received two National Science Foundation grants totaling $912,000 to build six telescopes in Chile that will study the most distant objects in the universe. The six Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes, or PROMPT, will be built at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Andes and are designed to study powerful but distant explosions called gamma-ray bursts. PROMPT will observe these gamma-ray bursts at visible and infrared wavelengths, and will do so within mere seconds of spacecraft notification, when they are still expected to be very bright, even if at great distances. Since humans cannot react on so rapid a timescale, PROMPT will be entirely controlled by computers. “The newest telescopes in Chile will be a unique addition to our growing battery of telescopes -there is no other system in the world like it,” said Dr. Daniel Reichart, assistant professor of physics and astronomy in UNC-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences and the lead researcher for the NSF-funded project. “With PROMPT and our existing telescope in Chile and a soon-to-be dedicated telescope in South Africa, we will have more guaranteed access to the Southern Hemisphere sky than any other U.S. [university].” The first phase of PROMPT is scheduled for completion this year, and the second phase, which supports a major equipment upgrade, is scheduled for completion in mid-2005. Ten percent of PROMPT’s observing time will be available to the broader astronomical community on a proposal basis for a period of at least three years. | UNC News Release : : : : : : June 29, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | In the Center of NGC 6559 : : : : : : June 15, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | The Cocoon Nebula : : : : : : June 8, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | A Dying Galaxy : : : : : : June 3, 2004
Galaxy Cleaned Out by Encounter with Hot Cluster Gas | New observations from the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope on Kitt Peak show striking visual evidence for a galaxy being stripped bare of its star-forming material by its violent ongoing encounter with the hot gas in the center of a galaxy cluster. NOAO Press Release 04-06 : : : : : : June 2, 2004Distant Young Galaxy Hints at Gradual End to the Dark Ages | Astronomers have peered into the fog of the early universe and discovered a young and extremely distant galaxy at a time when the Universe was only about six percent of its present age. When compared with other recent findings about the “dark ages” of the early universe, this discovery suggests that this murky era could have lasted the better part of a billion years. NOAO Press Release 04-05 : : : : : : June 2, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | The Colorful Clouds of Rho Ophiuchi : : : : : : June 1, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | The Supergalactic Wind from Starburst Galaxy M82 : : : : : : May 31, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | The Red Lagoon : : : : : : May 26, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | A Colorful Comet : : : : : : May 25, 2004
Close-up Image of Comet NEAT From Kitt Peak Observatory | This image of Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) was taken at the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, AZ, on May 7, 2004. NOAO Press Release 04-04 : : : : : : May 21, 2004
Starburst Eye of a Galaxy Produces a Cosmic Shower | Combining images from orbiting and ground-based telescopes, an international team of astronomers has located the eye of a cosmic hurricane: the source of the 1 million mile-per-hour winds that shower intergalactic space from the galaxy M82. Using images combined from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the WIYN Telescope on Kitt Peak, Ariz., a team of astronomers from University College London and the University of Wisconsin-Madison has traced the origin of the galaxy’s “superwind” into the starburst heart of M82. University of Madison-Wisconsin Press Release : : : : : : May 19, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | Huddled Masses : : : : : : April 22, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | Comet C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) : : : : : : April 18, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | Stellar Spectral Types: OBAFGKM : : : : : : April 15, 2004
SOAR: A 21st Century 4-meter Telescope | Sitting on Cerro Pachón, a few hundred meters from the 8-m Gemini South telescope, and within view of NOAO’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the SOuthern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope was dedicated on April 17, and is expected to begin routine science operations in late 2004. This 4.1-meter aperture telescope, funded by a partnership between the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the country of Brazil, Michigan State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is designed to produce the best quality images of any observatory in its class in the world. More Information
: : : : : : April 9, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | NGC 4565: Galaxy on the Edge : : : : : : April 1, 2004Twin Peaks goes celestial | About 200 Twin Peaks Elementary School sixth-graders and their families navigated a dark courtyard and peered through large telescopes as experienced astronomers showed them bright planets during an astronomy night last week. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter were all visible during the Twin Peaks Sixth Grade Astronomy Fair March 24 at the school, 7995 W. Twin Peaks Road. Arizona Daily Star article : : : : : : March 31, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | M39: Open Cluster in Cygnus : : : : : : March 31, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | The Sombrero Galaxy : : : : : : March 13, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | A Cerro Tololo Sky : : : : : : March 9, 2004
A Portrait of Life and Death in the Universe | In a small galaxy lies a luminous cloud of gas and dust, called a nebula, which houses a family of newborn stars. If not for the death of a massive star millions of years ago, this stellar nursery never would have formed. The nebula, Henize 206, and the remnants of the exploding star that created it, is pictured in superb detail in a new image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Henize 206 sits just outside our own galaxy, the Milky Way, in a satellite galaxy 163,000 light-years away called the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is home to hundreds and possibly thousands of stars, ranging in age from two to 10 million years old. By imaging Henize 206 in the infrared, Spitzer was able to see through blankets of dust that dominate visible light views. The resulting false-color image shows embedded young stars as bright white spots, and surrounding gas and dust in blue, green and red. Also revealed is a ring of green gas, which is the wake of the ancient supernova’s explosion. The visible light portion of this new Spitzer picture was provided by Chris Smith of NOAO’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, using the Univ. of Michigan / CTIO Heber D. Curtis Schmidt telescope at CTIO. For more details, see the Spitzer Press Release. : : : : : : March 3, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | The Cone Nebula : : : : : : March 2, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | NGC 6960: The Witch’s Broom Nebula : : : : : : February 22, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | The M7 Open Star Cluster in Scorpius : : : : : : February 19, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | McNeil’s Nebula : : : : : : January 27, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | A Galaxy Contorted : : : : : : January 26, 2004Space.com Image of the Day | Star Survives, Barely : : : : : : January 23, 2004Astronomy Picture of the Day | NGC 4631: The Whale Galaxy : : : : : : January 22, 2004
Fitful Young Star Sputters to Maturity in the Rosette Nebula | A duo of Chinese and American astronomers have discovered a young star in the fierce environs of the Rosette Nebula that is ejecting a complex jet of material riddled with knots and bow shocks. Stripped of its normally opaque surroundings by the intense ultraviolet radiation produced by nearby massive stars, this young stellar object is likely one of the last of its generation in this region of space. Its tenuous state of existence exposes the limitations that young stars—and perhaps even sub-stellar objects such as brown dwarfs and large planets—face in attempting to form in such a violent environment. NOAO Press Release 04-03 : : : : : : January 14, 2004Finding Our Nearest Stellar Neighbors | Some tourists travel all over the world but never visit their hometown museum. Likewise, many astronomers reach out to the edge of the observable universe without knowing their immediate neighborhood. But not Todd J. Henry of Georgia State University. Henry doesn't care about galaxy clusters, quasars, and the microwave background. Instead, he wants to know everything about the Sun's immediate galactic surroundings. His REsearch Consortium On Nearby Stars (RECONS, sponsored by NASA and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory) has a simple and straightforward goal: to find and characterize each and every object within 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years) of the Sun. “This is the only way of getting an unbiased census of the stellar makeup of the universe,” he says. Sky & Telescope Article : : : : : : January 8, 2004
Majority of Planetary Nebulae May Arise from Binary Systems | Near the end of its lifetime, a star like the Sun ejects its outer layers into space, producing a hazy cloud of material called a planetary nebula. The complex shapes and dazzling colors of planetary nebulae make them some of the most popular objects in the night sky, for both amateur observing and scientific study. NOAO Press Release 04-02 : : : : : : January 7, 2004
Giant Galaxy String Defies Models of How Universe Evolved | Wide-field telescope observations of the remote and therefore early Universe, looking back to a time when it was a fifth of its present age (redshift = 2.38), have revealed an enormous string of galaxies about 300 million light-years long. This new structure defies current models of how the Universe evolved, which can't explain how a string this big could have formed so early. NASA/Goddard Press Release : : : : : : January 6, 2004
Too Fast, Too Furious: A Galaxy’s Fatal Plunge | Trailing 200,000-light-year-long streamers of seething gas, a galaxy that was once like our Milky Way is being shredded as it plunges at 4.5 million miles per hour through the heart of a distant cluster of galaxies. In this unusually violent collision with ambient cluster gas, the galaxy is stripped down to its skeletal spiral arms as it is eviscerated of fresh hydrogen for making new stars. Space Telescope Science Institute Press Release 2004-02 : : : : : : January 5, 2004
Guide to the Best Spanish Language Astronomy Education Materials Debuts at NOAO Web Site | Where can you find the best advice on the most engaging astronomy-related books and teaching materials in Spanish? The staff of the educational outreach group at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory often hears this question, given that NOAO is based in Tucson, Arizona, a city with many Spanish-speaking residents located only 100 kilometers from Mexico. NOAO Press Release 04-01 : : : : : : January 5, 2004
Faintest Spectra Ever Raise Glaring Question: Why do Galaxies in the Young Universe Appear so Mature? | Until now, astronomers have been nearly blind when looking back in time to survey an era when most stars in the Universe were expected to have formed. This critical cosmological blind-spot has been removed by a team using the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope, showing that many galaxies in the young Universe are not behaving as expected some 8-11 billion years ago. Gemini Press Release 2004-1 | Space.com Story : : : : : : January 5, 2004
Astronomers: Star May Be Biggest, Brightest Yet Observed | A University of Florida-led team of astronomers may have discovered the brightest star yet observed in the universe, a fiery behemoth that could be as much as much as seven times brighter than the current record holder. But don’t expect to find the star—which is at least 5 million times brighter than the sun—in the night sky. Dust particles between Earth and the star block out all of its visible light. Whereas the sun is located only 8.3 light minutes from Earth, the bright star is 45,000 light years away, on the other side of the galaxy. It is detectable only with instruments that measure infrared light, which has longer wavelengths that can better penetrate the dust. University of Florida News Release : : : : : : 2003 News... |
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NOAO is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. |
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