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December 21, 2005
Flashes from the Past: Echoes from Ancient Supernovae | A team of astronomers has found faint visible echoes of three ancient supernovae by detecting their centuries-old light as it is reflected by clouds of interstellar gas hundreds of light-years removed from the original explosions. Located in a nearby galaxy in the southern skies of Earth, the three exploding stars flashed into short-lived brilliance at least two centuries ago, and probably longer. The oldest one is likely to have occurred more than six hundred years ago. NOAO Press Release 05-12. Space.com Story: Light Echoes Reveal Exploded Stars : : : : : : December 12, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | 30 Doradus: The Tarantula Zone : : : : : : December 6, 2005
Galaxy Collisions Dominate the Local Universe | More than half of the largest galaxies in the nearby universe have collided and merged with another galaxy in the past two billion years, according to a new study using hundreds of images from two of the deepest sky surveys ever conducted. NOAO Press Release 05-11. News coverage from: : : : : : : November 19, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | Thor’s Helmet : : : : : : November 15, 2005VERITAS Environmental Assessment | A draft version of the VERITAS Environmental Assessment has been posted and is open for public comment. : : : : : : November 6, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | A Sunspot Up Close : : : : : : November 4, 2005Kitt Peak National Observatory Visitor Center Offers New Public Membership Program | A growing slate of public programs and related outreach activities has spurred the Visitor Center at Kitt Peak National Observatory to offer its first-ever membership program for the general public. Now entering its fifth decade of operations, the Kitt Peak Visitor Center has been the hub for more than two million people eager to experience the largest and most diverse collection of research telescopes in any one place in the world. Two of the 25 active telescopes on Kitt Peak are dedicated solely to public viewing, via the world-renowned Kitt Peak Nightly Observing Program, with a third public telescope scheduled to open in early 2006. NOAO Press Release 05-10 : : : : : : October 26, 2005Space.com Image of the Day | A Clutch of Galaxies : : : : : : September 29, 2005Space.com Image of the Day | Bubble’s Edge : : : : : : September 27, 2005
Great Observatories Find “Big Baby” Galaxies in the Newborn Universe | Two of NASA’s Great Observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, have teamed up to “weigh” the stars in several distant galaxies. One of these galaxies, among the most distant ever seen, appears to be unusually massive and mature for its place in the young universe. This came as a surprise to astronomers, as the earliest galaxies in the universe are commonly thought to have been much smaller associations of stars that gradually merged to build large galaxies like our Milky Way. The galaxy, named HUDF-JD2, was pinpointed among approximately 10,000 others in a small patch of sky called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF). The galaxy is believed to be about as far away as the most distant known galaxies. It represents an era when the universe was only 800 million years old, about five percent of the universe’s age of 14 billion years. The big surprise is how much brighter the galaxy is in even longer- wavelength infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Spitzer is sensitive to the light from older, redder stars, which should make up most of the mass in a galaxy. The infrared brightness of the galaxy suggests it is massive. “This would be quite a big galaxy even today,” said team member Mark Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. “At a time when the universe was only 800 million years old, it’s positively gigantic,” he added. For more information, see the Space Telescope Science Institute press release. : : : : : : NY Times story | Virgo Offers a Peek at the Violent History of the Galaxies Next Door [free registration required] : : : : : : September 26, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | Streams of Stars in the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies : : : : : : September 23, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | Portrait of RY Tauri : : : : : : September 20, 2005
Hubble Finds Mysterious Disk of Blue Stars Around Black Hole | A team of astronomers including NOAO scientists have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to identify the source of a mysterious blue light surrounding a supermassive black hole in our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy (M31). The strange light has puzzled astronomers for more than a decade. The blue light is coming from a disk of hot, young stars. These stars are whipping around the black hole in much the same way as planets in our solar system are revolving around the Sun. Astronomers are perplexed about how the pancake-shaped disk of stars could form so close to a giant black hole. In such a hostile environment, the black hole's tidal forces should tear matter apart, making it difficult for gas and dust to collapse and form stars. The observations, astronomers say, may provide clues to the activities in the cores of more distant galaxies. For more, see Hubble Press Release. : : : : : : September 19, 2005
Case Astronomers Find Vast Stellar Web Spun by Colliding Galaxies | Case Western Reserve University astronomers have captured the deepest wide-field image ever of the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies, directly revealing for the first time a vast, complex web of “intracluster starlight”—nearly 1,000 times fainter than the dark night sky—filling the space between the galaxies within the cluster. The streamers, plumes and cocoons that make up this extremely faint starlight are made of stars ripped out of galaxies as they collide with one another inside the cluster, and act as a sort of “archaeological record” of the violent lives of cluster galaxies. The Virgo image was captured through Case’s newly refurbished 24-inch Burrell Schmidt telescope, built in the 1930s and located at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Over the course of 14 dark moonless nights, the researchers took more than 70 images of the Virgo Cluster, then used advanced image processing techniques to combine the individual images into a single image capable of showing the faint intracluster light. “When we saw all this very faint starlight in the image, my first reaction was WOW!,” project leader Chris Mihos said. Case Press Release : : : : : : September 15, 2005Slacker Astronomy Podcast | Trimming the Fat, Move over giant elliptical galaxies, here comes something leaner. : : : : : : September 12, 2005
SOAR Telescope First to Observe and Measure Distance to Massive Explosion | Fulfilling one of its central operational goals in a big way, the Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile made the first observations of the glowing remains of the most distant explosion ever seen in the Universe. The international telescope then provided the first accurate measurement of just how incredibly far away this explosion appears to be. NOAO Press Release 05-09 : : : : : : Astronomy Picture of the Day | The Colliding Galaxies of NGC 520 : : : : : : August 30, 2005
Survey of 4,000 Galaxies Finds “Downsizing” on a Cosmic Scale | A comprehensive survey of more than 4,000 elliptical and lenticular galaxies in 93 nearby galaxy clusters has found a curious case of galactic “downsizing.” Contrary to expectations, the largest, brightest galaxies in the census consist almost exclusively of very old stars, with much of their stellar populations having formed as long ago as 13 billion years. There appears to be very little recent star formation in these galaxies, nor is there strong evidence for recent ingestion of smaller, younger galaxies. NOAO Press Release 05-08 : : : : : : August 10, 2005
Gemini Uncovers ‘Lost City’ of Stars | Like archaeologists unearthing a 'lost city,' astronomers using the 8-meter Gemini South telescope have revealed that the galaxy NGC 300 has a large, faint extended disk made of ancient stars, enlarging the known diameter of the galaxy by a factor of two or more. Gemini Press Release : : : : : : July 30, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | M106 in Canes Venatici : : : : : : July 25, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | Unusual Gas Filaments Surround Galaxy NGC 1275 : : : : : : July 12, 2005Space.com Image of the Day | The Death of a Star : : : : : : July 9, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | The Colorful Clouds of Rho Ophiuchi : : : : : : July 8, 2005
Teachers at Kitt Peak Workshop Obtain Scientific Observations of New Supernova in the Whirlpool Galaxy | High school teachers making observations with the research telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory as part of an intensive professional development workshop obtained some of the earliest multicolor imaging and spectra of a newly exploded massive star in a nearby galaxy. NOAO Press Release 05-07 : : : : : : June 30, 2005
Kitt Peak Visitor Center to Provide Live Images of Comet Impact | How can you watch the planned first-of-its-kind collision between a comet and a spacecraft from Earth this weekend, even if your night skies don’t allow a direct view? The Visitor Center at Kitt Peak National Observatory plans to offer a live feed of the encounter between NASA’s Deep Impact mission and Comet Tempel 1 starting this Sunday night (local time), running about an hour before the planned 10:52 p.m. PDT impact though about 45 minutes afterward. The feed will consist of still images of the distant comet, and a frequently updated movie assembled from the individual frames. Each frame will consist of a 30-second exposure taken with an electronic CCD imager attached to the 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope in the Kitt Peak Visitor Center observatory. NOAO Press Release 05-06 : : : : : : June 24, 2005Tucson scientists eager to watch probe hit comet | Everybody wants a piece of this action. The attention of astronomers all over the world will be directed toward the same part of the sky late into the night of July 3, as scientists carry out a plan to slam a spacecraft into a comet....Three of the most powerful telescopes at Kitt Peak Observatory, an observation complex 55 miles southwest of Tucson operated by the Tucson-based National Optical Astronomy Observatory, will be aimed at the comet before, during and after the blast. Arizona Daily Star article : : : : : : Space.com Image of the Day | Contemplating Antares : : : : : : June 23, 2005
More than 40 Nights of Kitt Peak Observations of NASA’s Deep Impact Comet to Culminate on July 3 | All of the major telescopes of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) on Kitt Peak are observing comet Tempel 1 for several nights before and after the planned Deep Impact event. Indeed, by the night of July 8, Kitt Peak National Observatory will have been used for 43 nights in 2005 in scientific support of the planned collision at approximately 10:52 p.m. local time on July 3 between the icy comet and a special probe released from the main Deep Impact spacecraft. NOAO Press Release 05-05 : : : : : : June 18, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | Visitors’ Galaxy Gallery : : : : : : June 7, 2005
Kitt Peak to Host Special Evening Program for Deep Impact Comet Event on July 3 | The Kitt Peak Visitor Center will host a special public program on July 3, 2005, the night of the expected encounter between the NASA Deep Impact spacecraft and Comet Tempel 1. At approximately 10:52 pm Tucson time that evening, an 820-pound copper projectile released previously by the Deep Impact spacecraft is expected to be run over by the comet in a high-speed collision of about 23,000 miles per hour. Planetary scientists and astronomers hope that this energetic impact will create a fresh crater on the comet as large as a football stadium, exhuming the pristine ice within the comet. Remote measurements of the resulting plume of ancient icy material and the interior of the crater will be made by the main Deep Impact spacecraft and from telescopes at nearly every major ground-based observatory around the world that can see the amazing event, including Kitt Peak National Observatory. NOAO Press Release 05-04 : : : : : : 
Supernova Remnant N 63A Menagerie | A violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas and dust is seen in a Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby supernova remnant. Denoted N 63A, the object is the remains of a massive star that exploded, spewing its gaseous layers out into an already turbulent region. The color composite shown here is of data from Spitzer infrared, Chandra X-ray and CTIO ground-based H-alpha. CTIO also provided a visible light image of this region for comparison. Hubble Press Release 2005-15 : : : : : : June 3, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | M27: The Dumbbell Nebula : : : : : : May 30, 2005
Spitzer Captures Fruits of Massive Stars’ Labors | The saga of how a few monstrous stars spawned a diverse community of additional stars is told in a new image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The striking picture reveals an eclectic mix of embryonic stars living in the tattered neighborhood of one of the most famous massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy, Eta Carinae. Astronomers say that radiation and winds from Eta Carinae and its massive siblings ripped apart the surrounding cloud of gas and dust, shocking the new stars into being. NOAO provided a visible light image of this region for comparison. Spitzer Press Release 2005-12 : : : : : : May 27, 2005Kitt Peak to get billion-pixel, $6.6M camera | Astronomers at Kitt Peak have the green light to build a $6.6 million, billion-pixel camera for taking detailed research photographs of the night sky.
When it's completed, the camera - the first of its kind in the world - will be fitted to the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope, an already celebrated member of the small army of telescopes atop Kitt Peak southwest of Tucson. : : : : : : May 24, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | Swirls and Stars in IC 4678 : : : : : : May 2, 2005Space.com Image of the Day | Spherical Dumbbell : : : : : : April 19, 2005
NASA Scientist: ‘Mars Could be Biologically Alive’ | Evidence for intense local enhancements in methane on Mars has been bolstered by ground-based observations. The methane, as well as water on Mars, was detected using state-of-the-art infrared spectrometers stationed atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii and in Cerro Pachón, Chile. Read the Space.com story : : : : : : April 17, 2005
The Accidental Genius | It’s 3:30 in the morning at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Southern Arizona, where the world's largest collection of optical research telescopes eyeballs the cosmos above the star-bright Sonoran desert. For the past hour I've been standing in blindfold darkness at the foot of the Mayall 4-meter telescope, a silver-lidded giant moaning as it slews from one celestial target to another. Read the LA Times story (Free Registration required) : : : : : : April 6, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | The M7 Open Star Cluster in Scorpius : : : : : : March 30, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | ULXs in M74 : : : : : : March 27, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | The Einstein Cross Gravitational Lens : : : : : : March 23, 2005Space.com Image of the Day | Wispy Orion : : : : : : March 21, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | Orion’s Horsehead Nebula : : : : : : March 1, 2005
Exposing Dusty Galactic Hideouts | How do you hide something as big and bright as a galaxy? You smother it in cosmic dust. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope saw through such dust to uncover a hidden population of monstrously bright galaxies approximately 11 billion light-years away. These strange galaxies are among the most luminous in the universe, shining with the equivalent light of 10 trillion suns. But, they are so far away and so drenched in dust, it took Spitzer’s highly sensitive infrared eyes and crucial complementary data from the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey to find them. The Cornell-led team that observed with Spitzer first scanned a portion of the night sky for signs of invisible galaxies using an instrument on Spitzer called the multiband imaging photometer. The team then compared the thousands of galaxies seen in this infrared data to the deepest available ground-based optical images of the same region, obtained by the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey. This led to identification of 31 galaxies that can be seen only by Spitzer. “This large area took us many months to survey from the ground,” said Dr. Buell Jannuzi, co-principal investigator for the Deep Wide-Field Survey, “so the dusty galaxies Spitzer found truly are needles in a cosmic haystack.” Spitzer Press Release 2005-08 : : : : : : Astronomy Picture of the Day | NGC 1531/2: Interacting Galaxies : : : : : : February 27, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | The Solar Spectrum : : : : : : February 15, 2005
Kitt Peak National Observatory to Host “Einstein Day” on March 12 | The general public is invited to a special event at the Kitt Peak Visitor Center on Saturday, March 12, 2005, to celebrate the World Year of Physics and commemorate the birthday of Albert Einstein, the world-renowned physicist whose work published in 1905 earned him a Nobel Prize and led to a century of amazing progress in our understanding of matter and light. NOAO Press Release 05-03 : : : : : : January 31, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | NGC 2467: From Gas to Stars : : : : : : January 25, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | NGC 6946: The Fireworks Galaxy : : : : : : January 19, 2005
Portrait of a Star on the Edge | NOAO Astronomer Steve Ridgway is part of a team that used the CHARA array atop California’s Mount Wilson to make detailed measurements of the physical properties of Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo. The team measured the star’s size and shape, the temperature difference between its poles and equator, and the orientation of its spin axis. They found that Regulus’ frenetic spin gives the star its grossly bulging mid-section; its equatorial diameter is one-third larger than its north-south diameter, and that its axis of rotation happens to point in the same direction as its motion through the galaxy—meaning it zips along like an enormous, spinning bullet. NSF Press Release 05-007 : : : : : : January 14, 2005Space.com Image of the Day | Where Stars Are Born : : : : : : January 12, 2005
Star Birth in the Trifid Nebula | Visible light images from NOAO telescopes have been used by scientists from the Spitzer Science Center to help them better understand dozens of massive embryonic stars in the Trifid Nebula (M20), which were discovered in images from two instruments aboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. JPL Press Release 2005-014 : : : : : : January 11, 2005Flickering Red Giants a Surprising Find | A significant number of red giant stars whose output varies on timescales as short as 10 minutes has been found in the nearby Ursa Minor dwarf galaxy by an astronomer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and a summer undergraduate student. This surprising variability occurs on a much shorter timescale than previously thought possible for such mature, giant stars. NOAO Press Release 05-01 : : : : : : 
Steward Observatory Mirror Lab Awarded Contract for Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Mirror | The LSST Corporation has awarded a $2.3 million contract to the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Mirror Lab to purchase the glass and begin engineering work for the 8.4-meter diameter main mirror for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). This award was announced today in San Diego at the 205th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. LSST Press Release : : : : : : 
New Clues in Mystery of Giant Galactic Blobs | Astronomers have used the Spitzer Space Telescope to take infrared images of strange features called "giant galactic blobs." These intensely glowing clouds of material are located billions of light-years from Earth along huge filamentary strings of young galaxies that were originally discovered several years ago in images from the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. JPL Press Release 2005-010 : : : : : : 
Chasing Stellar Road Runners | Astronomers at Georgia State University have used the 0.9-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory to find 26 new stellar neighbors within 82 light-years of the Sun, including four single faint red dwarf stars within 33 light-years (10 parsecs). This is the primary distance horizon being explored by a long-term observing program called RECONS. GSU Press Release : : : : : : January 10, 2005
NOAO-Trained Teachers to Observe with Spitzer | The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) has teamed with the Spitzer Science Center (SSC) to offer a dozen graduates from NOAO’s advanced teacher professional development program a unique chance to make research-quality observations with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
Known as the “NASA Spitzer Space Telescope Observing Program for Students and Teachers,” the project was germinated in a series of informal discussions that began in earnest at the January 2004 American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Atlanta. Applications were solicited in September 2004, and 12 teachers from the NOAO Research Based Science Education (RBSE) and its successor, Teacher Leaders in Research Based Science Education (TLRBSE), were selected from 37 highly qualified applicants. : : : : : : 
Huge Image of A Barred Spiral Galaxy | Pat Knezek of the WIYN Observatory collaborated with the Hubble Heritage Team at the Space Telescope Science Institute to produce one of the largest Hubble Space Telescope images ever released of a complete galaxy, featuring the beautiful prototypical barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300. Hubble Press Release : : : : : : 
The Largest Known Stars | Knut Olsen of Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) is a member of a team including Philip Massey of Lowell Observatory and MIT undergraduate Emily Levesque that used telescope data from Kitt Peak National Observatory and CTIO plus computer models to identify the three largest stars yet found in the Milky Way galaxy. All three of these red supergiant stars have radii more than 1,500 times larger than the Sun. Lowell Observatory Press Release : : : : : : January 9, 2005Astronomy Picture of the Day | Jupiter’s Rings Revealed : : : : : : January 6, 2005
Veil Nebula is Reader’s Choice in 2004 | A part of MSNBC's A Year in Review, 2004 is a slide show of images that readers chose as the best of the year. Included in those images is an NOAO image of the Veil Nebula. Access the slide showfrom the link below—the Veil Nebula is the 11th image. You can also download the image directly from our Image Gallery from the link below. : : : : : : January 4, 2005Space.com Image of the Day | Fireworks of Star Formation : : : : : : 2004 News... |
Douglas Isbell |
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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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