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Jeff Kantor, on building and managing a 150 Petabyte databaseInterview It makes for one heck of a project mission statement. Explore the nature of dark matter, chart the Solar System in exhaustive detail, discover and analyze rare objects such as neutron stars and black hole binaries, and map out the structure of the Galaxy. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is, in the words of Jeff Kantor, LSST data management project manager, "a proposed ground-based 6.7 meter effective diameter (8.4 meter primary mirror), 10 square-degree-field telescope that will provide digital imaging of faint astronomical objects across the entire sky, night...

First Light for the PRIMA instrumentThe PRIMA instrument [1] of the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) recently saw "first light" at its new home atop Cerro Paranal in Chile. When fully operational, PRIMA will boost the capabilities of the VLTI to see sources much fainter than any previous interferometers, and enable astrometric precision unmatched by any other existing astronomical facility. PRIMA will be a unique tool for the detection of exoplanets.

Astronomers using a variety of techniques have discovered more than 300 planets circling other stars since 1995, when a Swiss team announced finding the first Jupiter-mass planet orbiting a sun-like star, but few of them bear any resemblance to rocky planets like Earth. Because planets are far smaller and dimmer than the star they circle, most techniques rely on detecting not the planet itself, but its effects on its star, such as changes in the star's light or wobbles in the star's rotation due to a planet's gravitational tug as it circles. Consequently, most of the planets found so far...

Astronomers have discovered a new planet about the same size as Jupiter, it was announced today. The planet, which has been given the less-than-romantic name CoRot-Exo-4b, was spotted by a European space mission. It forms part of the Monoceros constellation - the Unicorn - and lies about 3,000 light years from our solar system. Astronomers believe it is mostly made up of gas and has a similar composition to Jupiter.

Calculations show that the star's sudden brightness was clearly visible to the naked eye, but no one reported anything until the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope spotted an unexpected burst of cosmic X-rays. On Oct. 9, 2007, XMM-Newton was turning from one target to another when it passed across a bright source of X-rays that no one was expecting. The source was not listed in any previous X-ray catalog, yet the mysterious object was lighting up XMM-Newton's view of the cosmos. The XMM-Newton team looked up three possible celestial candidates as at this location, including a normally faint star known...

GREENBELT, Md. (CNS) -- An adjunct professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington has devised a new way to see outer space -- from the moon. Astrophysicist Peter Chen, along with colleagues Michael Van Steenberg, Ronald Oliversen and Douglas Rabin at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, has pioneered a method to create giant telescope mirrors on the moon. "We can do something really unique here. We can go to the moon and create a large telescope 20 or 50 meters across. This is far out of anything that exists on earth," said Chen in an interview with Catholic...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A NASA spokesman on Thursday said that the launch of its GLAST space telescope, which will allow scientists to look deep into the universe, has been delayed until Wednesday June 11 at the earliest. It is the third time the GLAST launch had been delayed, this time due to a battery in the system that would destroy the rocket in case it deviates from its course, said NASA spokesman George Diller. The launch window extends to August 7 and there could be further delays, Diller said. The GLAST -- the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope -- will...

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory equipment helps to sniff out radioactive sources. Remnants of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (pictured), are being used in other fields.NASA The 9-year mission of NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory ended in 2000 with a plunge into the Pacific Ocean. But its spare parts are living on — as a detector of dirty bombs. James Ryan, an astrophysicist at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, has recycled parts from one of the space telescope’s old instruments, realizing that they can work just as well pointing horizontally as they did vertically up into the heavens. The...

PALMDALE - Technicians at the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale have removed the German-built primary mirror assembly from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy - a telescope carried in a modified Boeing 747 - in preparation for the final finish coating of the mirror. Technicians employed a high-precision crane and other equipment to lift the more than two-ton mirror assembly from its cavity in the rear fuselage of the aircraft, NASA said in an update on the observatory, called SOFIA. After it was removed, the assembly was moved to a clean room where it is being prepared for...

A telescope on the far side of the moon could probe the "dark ages" of the universe while blocking out the radio-wavelength noise of Earth civilizations. Up to one hundred thousand antennas would form the Dark Ages Lunar Interferometer (DALI), the largest telescope ever built, and allow astronomers to hear faint whispering signals from a time when no stars even existed. "This will look at one of the most fundamental questions ever conceived, back when the universe was made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium — no stars, no galaxies," said Kurt Weiler, senior astronomer at the U.S. Naval...

Cosmologists Probe Mystery Of Dark Energy With South Pole Telescope ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2008) — Something is pulling the universe apart. What is it, and where will it take us from here? Scientists at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, seek answers to those questions with the newly-commissioned South Pole Telescope. Frigid and bone-dry, with six straight months of night each year, the South Pole is a forbidding place to live or work. But for largely the same reasons, it’s one of the best spots on the planet for surveying the faint cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation...

This is a video of some of earth’s universe grandeur. The song is, God Is So Good, sung by children. The pictures and images were taken by Hubble telescope and the last image is called the Cat’s Eye Nebula.

PALMDALE - NASA's SOFIA infrared-observatory aircraft spent several nights parked on an unlit ramp next to its hangar as its telescope team got a working knowledge of how telescope operating systems interact and the experience of tracking celestial targets from the ground. Their primary celestial target was the North Star, NASA said. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, consists of a modified Boeing 747 jet fitted with a 22-ton German-built infrared telescope. The aircraft is housed at the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale. In addition to establishing a functional baseline for operation of the telescope's control...

TUCSON, Ariz. - The world's most powerful optical telescope is now operating on southeastern Arizona's Mount Graham, capturing striking images of objects millions of light years away. The Large Binocular Telescope — two 8.4-meter diameter mirrors that together gather more light and have 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope — took its first images using both mirrors late last year. The first images were released to the public on Thursday. There are huge telescopes that operate in other parts of the spectrum — from low-frequency radio waves to far beyond visible light — but no traditional telescope...

Diamonds may be rare on Earth, but surprisingly common in space -- and the super-sensitive infrared eyes of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are perfect for scouting them, say scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Using computer simulations, researchers have developed a strategy for finding diamonds in space that are only a nanometer (a billionth of a meter) in size. These gems are about 25,000 times smaller than a grain of sand, much too small for an engagement ring. But astronomers believe that these tiny particles could provide valuable insights into how carbon-rich molecules, the basis...

Upgraded Hubble telescope to be 90 times as powerful 20:07 08 January 2008 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga, Austin Astronaut Steve Smith works on Hubble during the second servicing mission in 1997. Hubble was specifically built to be serviced in orbit with replaceable parts and instruments (Image: NASA) Space shuttle astronauts will attempt an unprecedented in-orbit repair of key Hubble Space Telescope (HST) instruments during the servicing mission scheduled for August 2008. The repairs, along with the addition of two new instruments, will make Hubble 90 times as powerful as it was after its flawed optics were corrected in 1993....

When a shot is fired, one expects to see a person with a gun. In the same way, whenever a giant star explodes, astronomers expect to see a galaxy of stars surrounding the site of the blast. This comes right out of basic astronomy, since almost all stars in our universe belong to galaxies. Image right: The robotic Palomar 60-inch telescope imaged the afterglow of GRB 070125 on January 26, 2007. Right: An image taken of the same field on February 16 with the 10-meter Keck I telescope reveals no trace of an afterglow, or a host galaxy. The white...

<p>It's the last round-up for the people's telescope. Next August, after 20 years of hype, disappointment, blunders, triumphs and peerless glittering vistas of space and time, and four years after NASA decided to leave the Hubble Space Telescope to die in orbit, setting off public and congressional outrage, a group of astronauts will ride to the telescope aboard the space shuttle Atlantis with wrenches in hand...</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The solar wind, which whips off the sun and blows past Earth and through the solar system, is unleashed by powerful magnetic waves in electrically charged gas around the sun, scientists said on Thursday. The mechanisms that cause the solar wind had baffled scientists for decades, but were revealed in observations by a Japanese satellite called Hinode orbiting Earth, the scientists said in research published in the journal Science. "The magnificent thing about the success of Hinode is its unprecedented view of the dynamics of the sun," Jonathan Cirtain, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight...

Astronomers expect to be 'Dazled' By Jonathan Amos BBC News science reporter, in Birmingham The VLT facility sits on top of the Paranal Mountain in Chile UK and Australian astronomers are about to use a new instrument to detect the most distant galaxies yet observed. Dazle is tuned to search for specific infrared wavelengths of light that should be associated with some of the first stars to shine in the Universe. The instrument will be fitted to the 8m Melipal Very Large Telescope at Paranal in Chile. University of Cambridge researchers gave details of their work at the UK...

Battered and somewhat broken, a sentinel stands between the Earth and the Sun, continually watching for impending solar storms and other activities. For a decade, the spacecraft - the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO - has not only peeled back many mysteries of the Sun but also revolutionized studies of the space weather that bathes every corner of the solar system. Scientists and engineers around the world are celebrating SOHO's 10th anniversary and heralding it as one of the most productive spacecraft ever flown. Built by the European Space Agency and operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in...

Almost 20 years after it was first conceived, what will become the world's most powerful optical telescope is about to open its eyes. Lying beneath the clear skies of Arizona, the $120m (£55m) Large Binocular Telescope will allow astronomers to probe the Universe further back in time and in more detail than ever before. "The LBT is a very exciting step forward for astronomy," said Professor Gerry Gilmore of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, UK. "Not only is it big, but it is proving the practical implementation of some of the new technologies which will be...

GREENBELT, Md. - A new NASA space telescope will give scientists a peek at some of the most energetic objects and events in the universe. The new Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope to be launched next spring doesn't see visible light like our eyes, but gamma rays, the most energetic photons in the electromagnetic spectrum. They are produced by black holes, supernovae, neutron stars and other phenomena. GLAST will be the first gamma ray observatory to survey the entire sky. Scientists are hoping it will provide clues about dark matter, the early universe and allow them to test fundamental principles...

The principle of the interferometric technique is to combine the light collected by two or more distant telescopes. The greater the distance between the telescopes, the sharper the observations obtained... The first results presented in this issue cover various fields of stellar and circumstellar physics. Two papers deal with Herbig Ae/Be stars, a class of pre-main sequence stars with masses ranging from 2 to 5 solar masses and with ages younger than 10 Myr. These articles present observations of the stellar system MWC 297... and the lower-mass, less active system HD 104237. They offer new information about the geometry of...

EXO WORLDSNASA Shows Future Space Telescopes Could Detect Earth Twin Three simulated planets -- one as bright as Jupiter, one half as bright as Jupiter and one as faint as Earth -- stand out plainly in this image created from a sequence of 480 images captured by the High Contrast Imaging Testbed at JPL. A roll-subtraction technique, borrowed from space astronomy, was used to distinguish planets from background light. The asterisk marks the location of the system's simulated star. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech by Staff Writers Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 12, 2007 For the first time ever, NASA researchers have successfully...

Fleenor is part of a venture known as the XO Project. Funded by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., the XO Project is a joint effort between professional and amateur astronomers in the United States and Europe to discover planets orbiting other stars. And it is through this collaboration that Fleenor, using his backyard observatory, was part of the discovery of two such extrasolar planets, XO-2b and XO-3b. The type of planets that the project hunts for are called transiting Jovian extrasolar planets... "Transiting" indicates that the planet's orbital plane carries it in front of the star...

Astronomers have revealed one of the strangest planets yet discovered. The extrasolar oddity is 13 times the size of Jupiter and is so close to its star that it completes an orbit in just 3.2 days... The planet was found by the XO Project, a collaboration between researchers and amateur astronomers; who help to clock up detailed observations of potential planetary systems over time... Normally, orbits of objects in close proximity to stars become circular with time, said McCullough. The egg-shaped elliptical orbit suggests XO-3b has a near neighbour tugging it out of a circular path, he said. Alternatively, astronomers...

HILO, Hawaii - Astronomers believe they've glimpsed light from some of the universe's first stars through the world's largest telescope on the Big Island. The astronomy team from the California Institute of Technology, which was to present its findings in London on Wednesday, said they used the Keck II telescope atop Mauna Kea volcano to see farther into space than ever before. By magnifying the telescope's range, the scientists said they were able to see light generated by galaxies 13 billion years ago, when the universe was only 500 million years old. At that time, the universe was still in...

The Microvariability and Oscillations of STars (MOST) satellite, a Canadian Space Agency mission, was launched June 30, 2003 from a Russian cosmodrome aboard a former Soviet nuclear missile. About the size of a suitcase and situated 820 km above the Earth, MOST is capable of measuring the brightness variations of stars more precisely than any other instrument on Earth or in space... Originally intended for a one-year mission, MOST has exceeded every expectation of mission planners. It has recently begun the search for Terra Nova -- Earths around other stars -- and the study of weather on planets beyond the...

PALMDALE - The world's newest flying telescope will be in focus on Saturday, June 30, at NASA's Aerospace Exploration Gallery in the Palmdale Civic Center. Dr. Dana Backman will give presentations regarding NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronom beginning at 9 a.m., then repeating at 10:30, noon and 1:30 p.m. Dr. Backman is with the SETI Institute and the Universities Space Research Association and manages SOFIA's education and public outreach program. An infrared astronomer, Backman received his doctoral degree in astrophysics from the University of Hawaii. While Backman was a post-doctoral student at NASA's Ames Research Center, he flew on...

June 25, 2007: NASA's next moon rocket is still on the drawing board, but already scientists are dreaming up big new things to do with it. "The Ares V rocket will be able to launch missions whose volume or mass or both can be handled no other way," says Philip Stahl, an internationally respected optical engineer now at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Maybe, he says, we should use it "to launch big space telescopes." How big? Consider the following: Ares V will be able to place almost 130,000 kg (284,000 lbs; 8% more than the Saturn V rocket of...

Looking for faint companions. The left side shows a raw image, while the right side shows the result after the newly developed technique was applied. Thanks to this technique it is possible to study the faint AB Doradus C (about 100 times fainter than its host), once the contamination from the brighter AB Doradus A and the artefacts due to atmospheric turbulence are subtracted. AB Doradus is the closest faint companion ever detected by imaging. (Credit: Image courtesy of European Southern Observatory)

EDWARDS AFB - The latest research aircraft to join the fleet at Dryden Flight Research Center arrived May 31. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, consists of a 2½-meter (8.2-foot) in diameter infrared telescope mounted inside the 747 airliner, chosen for its ability to house the 45,000-pound telescope. The long-range airliner is capable of remaining airborne for six hours at altitudes higher than 41,000 feet, above much of the atmospheric water vapor. SOFIA will be used to study the universe in the infrared spectrum, as well as to develop observational techniques, instruments and for educational purposes. The aircraft...

The idea of building a radio observatory on the Moon has been bolstered by a high-level report on lunar science. Situated on the far side, it would be able to look back to the "dark ages" of the early universe, and map the magnetic fields of planets around other stars... On Tuesday, an NRC committee headed by George Paulikas, a former scientist with The Aerospace Corporation in El Segunda, California, US, reported its findings... One of the astronomical ideas considered most promising by the committee was a radio observatory on the Moon's surface. A paper on the idea was submitted...

The French-led Corot mission has spied its first planet - a very hot world bigger than Jupiter - passing in front of a far-off star. The spacecraft was launched on 27 December last year and is the first to hunt for Earth-like planets from space. Corot scientists said to find a planet so early on "significantly exceeded pre-launch expectations". Artist's concept: A planet is seen as it transits a star

During solar maximum, when the Sun's activity is at a peak in its 11 year cycle, the polarity of its magnetic field changes: the north pole takes on the polarity of the south pole and vice versa. Now, for the first time ever, a spacecraft has witnessed this process from a front-row seat high above the Sun's south pole... Andre Balogh, from Imperial College, London, who is Principal Investigator for the Ulysses magnetometer, says: ..."Clearly, a struggle is going on in the Sun's magnetic field, with freshly emerging new polarity regions racing towards the polar regions, encountering the slowly decaying...

ESA's Darwin mission aims to discover extrasolar planets and examine their atmospheres for signs of life, particularly for the presence of certain life-related chemicals such as oxygen and carbon dioxide. The major technical challenge lies in distinguishing, or resolving, the light from an extrasolar planet from the hugely overwhelming radiation emitted by the planet's nearby star... Darwin will use nulling interferometry, a specific interferometric technique used to shield the overwhelming star emissions by precisely delaying the radiation coming from some of the telescopes by a small amount. This, in combination with achromatic -- or colour independent -- phase shifters, will...

Low mass M- and K-type stars are much more numerous in the solar neighborhood than solar-like G-type stars. Therefore, some of them may appear as interesting candidates for the target star lists of terrestrial exoplanet (i.e., planets with mass, radius, and internal parameters identical to Earth) search programs like Darwin (ESA) or the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph/Inferometer (NASA). The higher level of stellar activity of low mass M stars, as compared to solar-like G stars, as well as the closer orbital distances of their habitable zones (HZs), means that terrestrial-type exoplanets within HZs of these stars are more influenced by...

The cold, dry atmosphere above the South Pole will allow the SPT to more easily detect the CMB (cosmic microwave background) radiation, the afterglow of the big bang, with minimal interference from water vapor. On the electromagnetic spectrum, the CMB falls somewhere between heat radiation and radio waves. The CMB is largely uniform, but it contains tiny ripples of varying density and temperature. These ripples reflect the seeds that, through gravitational attraction, grew into the galaxies and galaxy clusters visible to astronomers in the sky today. The SPT's first key science project will be to study small variations in the...

A new window to the universe has opened with today's release of the first dazzling images from NASA's newly named Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility. The first observations, of a glowing stellar nursery; a swirling, dusty galaxy; a disc of planet-forming debris; and organic material in the distant universe, demonstrate the power of the telescope's infrared detectors to capture cosmic features never before seen. The Spitzer Space Telescope was also officially named today after the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr. He was one of the 20th century's most influential scientists, and in the mid-1940s,...

The U.S. Coast Guard is searching for a prize-winning computer scientist who failed to return from a quick trip to the Farallon Islands on Sunday. Coast Guard spokeswoman Lt. Amy Marrs, said Jim Gray, 63, was reported missing by his wife at 8:35 p.m. A ten-year veteran of Microsoft and winner of the prestigious A.M. Turing Award, Gray is a technical fellow whose work focuses on databases and transaction processing systems. Gray set out from San Francisco alone on Sunday morning in his 40-foot sailboat named ``Tenacious.'' The conditions were good, and Gray was expected back Sunday evening. Gray's wife...

Posted on: Friday, 5 January 2007, 06:15 CST 400-Year-Old Telescopes Appear in the Strangest of Places CHICAGO -- Like cell phones or the Internet in recent history, the telescope's introduction in the early 17th Century had a swift and lasting impact on the world. Telescopes revolutionized military strategy and within months showed the father of astronomy, Galileo Galilei, that Earth is not the center of the universe. Until recently, scholars thought only 8 or 10 of these important early telescopes _ made between 1608 and 1650 of tightly rolled paper and crudely ground lenses _ had survived to the present...

NASA's Kepler mission, with a field of view 70,000 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope, will attempt to detect Earth-like planets orbiting stars beyond our solar system. By continuously monitoring the brightness of more than 100,000 stars, Kepler will search for planets that transit in front of stars. As a planet passes in front of its parent star, Kepler will detect the star's brightness change to determine the planet's size and orbit. The possible discovery of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of other stars will be the first step in determining the extent of life in our galaxy.

A two-year survey of enormous interstellar dust clouds has turned up eight organic molecules in two different regions of space. One is a stellar nursery awash in light while the other is a cold, starless void. The finding, detailed in the current issue of Astrophysical Journal, supports other recent studies suggesting molecules important for life commonly form in the gas and dust clouds that condense to form stars and planets. The molecules were discovered using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), a large radio telescope located in West Virginia. "Finding eight [organic] molecules in the space of two...

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have confirmed the extrasolar planet status of two of the 16 candidates discovered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. One of the two confirmed exoplanets has a mass a little below 10 Jupiter masses, while the other is less than 3.8 Jupiter masses... Hubble monitored 180,000 stars for periodic, brief dimming in a star's brightness... Two of the stars in the field are bright enough that the SWEEPS team could make an independent confirmation of a planet's presence by spectroscopically measuring a slight wobble in the star's motion due to the gravitational pull of...

One half of the camera is designed to look for planets; the other half is optimised to detect the subtle variation in a star’s light, caused by sound waves rippling across the surface. These waves are the equivalent of seismic waves on the Earth... The technique is known as asteroseismology. ESA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been pioneering similar investigations of the Sun for many years. It has proved to be an extremely successful way to probe the internal conditions of a star and astronomers are eager to extend the technique to other stars. COROT will target at least...

ARECIBO, Puerto Rico - At the world's largest radio telescope, astronomers searching for asteroids on a collision course with Earth are bracing for a more worldly threat: The steepest budget cuts and first layoffs since the observatory opened in 1963. Managers are warning staff and outside astronomers to prepare for a leaner future, with fewer research projects and less telescope time available as they finish a costly repainting job amid a looming cut in U.S. government funding

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a dusty ring of material orbiting nearby Vega which was probably the result of a series of protoplanets smashing into each other. Vega is the fifth brightest star in the sky, located only 25 light-years away in the constellation of Lyra. This dust is constantly being blown out by Vega's intense radiation, so it's unlikely that the star has had this much dust for its entire lifetime. Instead, this ring must have been formed recently, perhaps when a Pluto-sized object was pulverized within the last million years or so.

Thus, over a period of five years -- 1989 to 1994 -- the two major space agencies had rejected a total of four major proposals for large radiatively cooled telescopes operating at infrared/sub-millimeter wavelengths. Nonetheless, the paradigm had shifted. For the first time large infrared telescopes seemed possible and the L2 Lagrangian point became the preferred location for missions of all kinds. Although proposals for a large-aperture radiatively-cooled infrared telescope would never win either an ESA or a NASA competition, "conventional wisdom" had moved on from cryogenic cooling. In 1996, the Dressler Committee’s "HST & Beyond" identified Edison and High-Z...

The largest single-element optical telescope at the moment—confusingly called the Large Binocular Telescope, but each of its two mirrors is made as a single piece—has mirrors 8.4 metres across. The two Keck telescopes on Hawaii and the South African Large Telescope, which use mosaics of hexagonal sub-mirrors, have systems up to 11 metres across. Even these, however, are minnows compared with what is being planned. America's National Science Foundation is now evaluating two competing designs: the Giant Magellan Telescope, some 24 metres across, and the self-explanatory Thirty Metre Telescope. A European Extremely Large Telescope is also on the drawing board....