Public visits & activities canceled
NSF's NOIRLab is monitoring the development of COVID-19. To ensure the safety of its staff and the public, it has been decided as a precautionary measure to suspend public visits to Cerro Tololo, Cerro Pachón in Chile, Maunakea in Hawai'i and to Kitt Peak in Arizona, and also suspend public events, media visits and classroom visits in all NOIRLab locations until further notice.
After an internal Operations Restart Readiness Review, Gemini North in Hawai‘i has been given the green light on their plan to restart nighttime observations on the night of 19 May.
Credit: National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory/AURA/NSF/P. Marenfeld
NOAO Unites with Gemini and LSST
As of 1 October 2019, NOAO has joined with Gemini Observatory and LSST operations to create a new organization, NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF’s NOIRLab). As the preeminent US center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, the new organization brings together diverse pathways for astronomical exploration, serves as a focal point for community coordination and collaboration, and enables the discoveries of the future. The integration is part of a long-term evolutionary trend and is reminiscent of the origin of NOAO itself.
Read more in this Currents article and in the NSF’s NOIRLab press release.
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NEID, on the 3.5-m WIYN telescope on KPNO, has made its first observations. It will measure the motion of nearby stars with extreme precision, allowing us to typify Earth-sized exoplanets. -
DESI, a new instrument on the Kitt Peak 4-m Mayall telescope has opened its array of thousands of fiber-optic “eyes” to the cosmos and successfully captured the light from distant galaxies. -
Dynamical footprints of two ancient migration events have been uncovered in our galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, using the KPNO Mayall and Gemini North telescopes. -
Astronomers have discovered the most distant protocluster of galaxies detected to date, 13 billion light years away. NOAO astronomer Chien-Hsiu Lee is a member of the discovery team. -
The Event Horizon Telescope team that made the first image of a supermassive black hole has been awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. NOAO Astronomer Tod Lauer is a team member. -
Pandia, Ersa, Eirene, Philophrosyne and Eupheme — these are the new names of five of the moons of Jupiter that were discovered last year with the Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco 4-m telescope at CTIO. -
The SOAR telescope at CTIO has just completed the first observing night for AEON, a new network of telescopes designed to enable rapid follow up of the changing night sky.
