Announcements 2024

11 November 2024: Together with the other Maunakea Observatories (MKOs), and a collection of STEM organizations, the International Gemini Observatory, funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, celebrated the annual AstroDay Kona. On Saturday, 2 November 2024, friends and families of all ages were invited to the free event held outdoors at the Kona Commons Shopping Center in Kailua-Kona, Hawai‘i. AstroDay Kona provided an estimated 600 visitors with the opportunity to learn about the Universe and the spectacular discoveries made by Gemini and the other telescopes on Maunakea. Like the Annual AstroDay in Hilo each May, this event is led by the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy. To share the wonders of the cosmos that inspire astronomy research, observatory staff presented the community with special science demonstrations, activities and informative exhibitions, including dozens of free images, hands on optics demonstrations, and exoplanet crafts! More information …

6 November 2024: Project and Science News Rubin achieved a historic milestone on October 24th, 2024, when the summit team captured the first on-sky data with Rubin’s Commissioning Camera and transferred it from Chile to the US Data Facility at SLAC. This successful end-to-end engineering test is the product of decades of dedication and innovation by Rubin Project members and the community. Read the details in Rubin’s public announcement on rubinobservatory.org. Additional visuals are available in the Gallery. During the periods of on-sky commissioning using the Commissioning Camera (ComCam) and LSST Camera (LSSTCam), Rubin Observatory plans to share brief technical updates on the progress of on-sky commissioning activities with the Rubin science community on a roughly weekly cadence. These posts will complement existing communications products. Posts will appear on the LSST Community forum in the News category with the commissioning-updates tag and on the LSSTC Slack workspace in the new #commissioning-updates channel. Rubin …

5 November 2024: More than 1300 students and 80 teachers participated in the activities of Viaje al Universo 2024, which took place from 21–25 October in La Serena and Vicuña in Chile. Viaje is one of NSF NOIRLab’s core educational programs, whose main goal is to bring astronomers, scientists, engineers and the staff of our observatories into the local classrooms. This year’s program included 41 activities implemented in 5 schools of La Serena and Vicuña by a group of 26 volunteers. All the activities of Viaje are aligned with the Chilean educational curriculum in order to provide a tangible contribution to the teaching and learning of science, physics and astronomy in Chile. Teachers and students were excited by all of the engaging activities, which included solar telescope observations, dark sky awareness experience, as well as workshops to learn about the Solar System, the life cycle of stars, galaxies, robotics, and much more. These …

2 November 2024: On 15 November Saturn will end its retrograde motion, halting its westward movement through the constellations and returning to its usual eastward motion. This reversal of direction is a phenomenon that all of the Solar System’s outer planets periodically undergo and is caused by Earth’s own motion around the Sun. As Earth orbits the Sun our perspective changes, causing the apparent movement of objects across the celestial sphere to switch directions following regular periods, depending on how fast they orbit the Sun. Saturn enters retrograde motion approximately once each year, typically lasting about 4.5 months. The Leonids meteor shower will be active 6–30 November, producing its peak rate of meteors around 17 November. The majority of meteors will appear to originate from the shower’s radiant point in the constellation Leo. However, shooting stars can be seen across the entirety of the night sky due to the various angles at which …

2 November 2024: Professional Development Opportunities NOIRLab Sessions at the NSTA National Conference Generating classroom lessons from NSF-funded facility resourcesThursday 7 November • 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. CDTNew Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – 294 Exploring the Cosmos with NOIRLab and LLPADFriday 8 November • 1:20 p.m. – 2:20 p.m. CDTNew Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – 281 Hunting For Brown Dwarfs With NSF NOIRLabSaturday 9 November • 10:20 a.m. – 11:20 a.m. CDTNew Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – 398 15 and 16 November, Capacitaciones de Educación del Observatorio Vera C. Rubin Time: 15 November 5:15 p.m. – 8:15 p.m. CLST and 16 November 9:30 a.m. –12:30 p.m. CLSTLocation: Universidad de Tarapacá, Campus Saucache, Arica, ChileDescription: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, will offer a training session for high school teachers. In this session, we will present the educational activities developed at the observatory, focusing on the investigation "Coloring …

2 November 2024: Join the hunt for exoasteroids by bringing a new citizen science opportunity into your classroom! Exoasteroids is a citizen science project designed to help astronomers discover debris disks and asteroids around white dwarfs. These disks are great environments for studying how planetary systems form and end. This project would fit well into teaching units such as Solar System formation and stellar evolution. Students will analyze data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope to identify changes in the brightness of white dwarfs, providing a glimpse into our own Solar System’s fate! See the full announcement here.

2 November 2024: Project ASTRO is a long-running project at NOIRLab that brings together classroom teachers and astronomers to collaborate on astronomy education in the classroom. The Project ASTRO fall workshop was held at Kitt Peak National Observatory on 12 October 2024. The all-day workshop consisted of hands-on activities, telescope tours, and evening observing. Teachers worked with astronomers to learn how astronomers analyze light, the phases of the Moon, and the science of comets — appropriate as Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS was a pleasing sight after sunset. Participants toured the Nicolas U. Mayall 4-meter telescope and the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope. Workshop attendees also saw a Science On a Sphere show. Teachers left the workshop with a plethora of educational resources and a network of astronomers to visit their classrooms, lead activities, and talk about science careers and other roles agreed on by the teachers and astronomers. Information and applications for the 2025 Project ASTRO workshop …

2 November 2024: In celebration of its fifth anniversary, NSF NOIRLab recently released a dazzling new image of the Rosette Nebula, taken with the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. Part of what makes the image so striking are the contrasting colors swirling in ethereal layers around the nebula’s center. So it may surprise you to learn that the raw data from the camera hold no information about the light’s colors at all. In fact, all the camera captures is light intensity. “Each pixel in the camera is like a little solar panel,” explains Travis Rector, an astronomer and image processing specialist who leads the production of many NOIRLab images. “The pixel just knows how much light is hitting it, and the more light that hits it the …

2 November 2024: Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is pleased to announce the launch of a variety of field trip programs for K–12 school groups, homeschool groups, and other education groups. This unique experience will give your students an opportunity to see first-hand the cutting-edge science and engineering of a national observatory! All field trips are tailored by grade level and include a visit to the Windows on the Universe Center at the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope. During the field trip, students will learn about the Tohono O’odham Nation, explore the Sun through exhibits and a Science on a Sphere show, and participate in a hands-on astronomy activity. Visit our webpage to find more information about the KPNO field trips and to request a trip for your school. See the full announcement here.

2 November 2024: Stellar Safari is Rubin Observatory’s newest investigation, released in August. Students explore stars in their wild and natural environments to compare and understand their properties, and determine the distances to the star clusters in which they reside. We are collecting feedback from both students and teachers on this investigation. Check it out and let us know what you think!An Educators’ Roundtable was held in October to solicit ideas and discussion about what resources and activities would be helpful for educators introducing Rubin First Look materials to students. This is the first in a series of Zoom meetings for educators to build momentum and engagement. Want to get involved? Email education@lsst.org. Alan Strauss, Head of Rubin EPO delivered the astrophysics plenary at the 2024 Congreso Nacional de Física meeting in Chihuahua, Mexico. His talk was titled Rubin Observatory — Bringing the Sky to Life, which presented a broad overview of the …

28 October 2024: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory passed its first end-to-end engineering test using a low-resolution testing camera known as the Commissioning Camera. The Commissioning Camera will later be replaced with the much higher resolution LSST Camera, the largest digital camera ever built, which Rubin Observatory will use to conduct the most comprehensive data-gathering mission in the history of astronomy — the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Rubin is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. The mood in the observatory control room was electric as Rubin’s first on-sky data were captured by the test camera and transferred successfully from the observatory in Chile to the U.S. Data Facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. This moment was the culmination of decades of hard work by the Rubin team. Those present in Chile gathered at the base of the Simonyi Telescope …

17 October 2024: Between 30 September and 3 October NSF NOIRLab hosted the First Gigayear(s) Conference at the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel. This conference brought together experts in a variety of fields to discuss the Universe’s first few billion years of evolution, and the galaxies, black holes, stars, chemicals, and large-scale structure that formed during that time. A considerable portion of the conference was also focused on discussions of the historical, geographical, and cultural context surrounding astronomical activities on Maunakea and the interface between the Maunakea Observatories and the local community at large. These discussions were paired with activities throughout the conference that focused on the culture, beauty, and diversity of Hawai‘i. Adding to the ongoing community conversation about these topics, NOIRLab hosted two discussion panels featuring observatory directors and project managers, the director of ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center (‘Imiloa) — the world’s only native astronomy center — and experts in community building and outreach. …

16 October 2024: Project and Science News Rubin officially has a complete telescope on Cerro Pachón after the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) Cell Assembly was installed by the summit team last week. With the Secondary Mirror (M2) and the 144-megapixel Commissioning Camera in place on the telescope mount, it won’t be long before Rubin takes its first on-sky observations. Read the details about this major achievement on rubinobservatory.org. Shortly after the M1M3 installation, Rubin announced the naming of its state-of-the-art telescope as the Simonyi Survey Telescope. This celebratory event at the Rubin Observatory Summit Facility on Cerro Pachón in Chile was attended by the Simonyi family, Rubin Observatory leadership, representatives of NSF and DOE, and other guests. Read more about it in this press release issued on October 11th. Preparing for the M1M3 installation took many months of integration and weeks of intense preparation, including load testing for the critical transport to level 8 …

3 October 2024: Have you ever wondered what might happen to our Solar System in a few billion years? The Sun will eventually turn into a white dwarf — a dead remnant of its current self — consuming the inner planets along the way. Some white dwarfs are surrounded by dusty disks containing asteroids, comets, and other remnants of their planetary systems. These disks are excellent laboratories for studying the end stage of planetary systems, providing unique information about the formation and death of planets. To help search for examples of asteroids orbiting white dwarfs in the Milky Way, NSF NOIRLab has launched the Exoasteroids citizen science project. With the help of volunteers, this project is aimed at identifying white dwarfs that have changed in brightness over the past decade. Such fluctuations may indicate that a white dwarf is the remnant of a planetary system still actively destroying its lingering exoasteroids, leading to …

3 October 2024: Project and Science News The seventh in a series of Rubin science releases showcasing Rubin’s upcoming contributions to various areas of astronomy and astrophysics is now available. Read (in English or Spanish) and share “Rubin Observatory’s Unparalleled Vision Will Revolutionize Multi-Messenger Astronomy,” on rubinobservatory.org A successful LSST@Europe6 meeting took place on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain, from September 16-20. A notable number of early-career scientists participated in the meeting, a good indicator that Rubin is generating excitement and will have a tremendous impact on the next decade of scientific research. A particular focus of discussions was on synergies between Rubin and other projects such as ESA’s Euclid, as well as with In-kind contribution teams based in Europe and globally. A group photo from the meeting is available in the Gallery. Rubin Observatory has updated the statement regarding increased deployment of satellite constellations at this link. In early …

2 October 2024: Multi-messenger astronomy is a powerful new tool for exploring the cosmos that combines the information from multiple types of signals to understand a single astronomical source or event. The four messengers that astronomers study are light, cosmic rays, neutrinos and gravitational waves. Because a source can change rapidly, it’s critical that observations of these messengers occur simultaneously or within a short time span so that astronomers capture their properties before the source changes. However, it’s quite the challenge to coordinate follow-up from multiple optical observatories across the globe — each with its own instruments — while minimizing duplication and maximizing the value of the combined dataset. That’s why the U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded $2 million in funding to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Center for AstroPhysical Surveys (CAPS), in collaboration with NSF NOIRLab and Las Cumbres Observatory, to build a service that allows researchers …

30 September 2024: Join us at the U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a program of NSF NOIRLab, for two unforgettable nighttime experiences brought back by popular demand: the Magnificent Moon Program and the Dark Sky Discovery Program. Located on a sacred Tohono O’odham Nation sky island, KPNO sits high above the Sonoran Desert in a unique mountain environment. Enjoy breathtaking views of the night sky and an intimate connection to nature through the rich flora, fauna, and fascinating geology of the region. Magnificent Moon Program: Embark on a fascinating, guided journey across the lunar surface. Using powerful telescopes, you’ll explore craters, mountains, maria, rilles, and the locations of the Apollo landings sites in incredible detail like you have never seen before. This experience is run on nights of the month that are close to the full Moon, ensuring excellent lunar vistas. This program generally uses the KPVC Roll Off …

20 September 2024: At the U.S. National Science Foundation Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab, is a collection of four small telescopes known as the Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System (SMARTS). Between 2003 and 2023, the SMARTS Consortium operated a 0.9-meter Telescope, a 1.0-meter Telescope, a 1.3-meter Telescope, and a 1.5-meter Telescope. The partners of the original SMARTS Consortium were the American Museum of Natural History, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), the University of Delaware, Georgia State University, Ohio State University, the Space Telescope Science Institute, Stony Brook University, Vanderbilt University/Fisk Observatory and Yale University. SMARTS is continuing in a new two-facet structure and the telescopes and their work will live on under two different entities. The 1.5-meter and 0.9-meter will be operated by the Georgia State University Research Foundation and will be known as SMARTS-GSU. University of North Carolina and the …

18 September 2024: From the early telescopes made hundreds of years ago by Galileo to the sophisticated astronomical observatories of today, people have built increasingly innovative tools to probe and measure the cosmos. Soon, researchers at two new institutes funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Simons Foundation will build a new breed of astronomical tools by harnessing the uniquely powerful abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to assist and accelerate humanity's understanding of the Universe. The new National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes for astronomical sciences are part of the NSF-led National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program, which now includes 27 AI institutes across the U.S. The two new institutes, one of which will be jointly led by NSF NOIRLab, will each receive $20 million over five years: $10 million from NSF and $10 million from the Simons Foundation. “The massive amount of data that will be gathered in the coming …

11 September 2024: Project and Science News Daylight Saving Time started in Chile on September 8th, so Chile is now four hours ahead of official Project time (PST). Be aware that meeting times may change — organizers can help confirm start times. The Summit team re-installed the Rubin Commissioning Camera (ComCam) on the telescope on August 23rd. ComCam has previously been on the telescope, but was removed before the installation of the secondary mirror (M2) in late July. ComCam — a smaller (144 megapixel), simpler version of the full 3200-megapixel LSST Camera — is being used for testing and commissioning activities prior to installation of the LSST Camera, anticipated to happen late this year. In the coming weeks the summit team will install the primary/tertiary (M1M3) mirror cell with its coated glass mirror, enabling ComCam to produce the first astronomical data from the Simonyi Survey Telescope. Watch a video of the installation on …