Announcements

11 February 2019: New Horizon’s departing view of Ultima Thule, caught as the spacecraft raced away at 31,000 mph, shows that the Kuiper Belt Object’s shape is actually quite odd. Rather than the “snowman” shape initially reported, it more closely resembles a giant pancake (Ultima) stuck to a dented walnut (Thule). The revelation came from “tracing out" the unlit side of Ultima Thule as it blocked the view to background stars (see animation). NOAO Astronomer Tod Lauer played a critical role in the investigation.

6 February 2019: Astronomers using adaptive optics on the 8-meter Gemini North telescope have resolved, for the first time in near-infrared light, a giant elliptical galaxy with a young radio jet down to unprecedented scales. The observations also show how the jets, emanating from a black hole at the center of this galaxy, are heating the interstellar medium, which may have a significant impact on the evolution of the host galaxy. Using adaptive optics (AO) and near-infrared imaging on the 8-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawai‘i, a team of astronomers lead by PhD student Henry Zovaro (The Australian National University) report the discovery of shocked molecular and ionized gas resulting from a jet-driven feedback coming from the center of a compact radio galaxy. The discovery offers important information on how such activity can influence the evolution of its host galaxy. The galaxy, which goes by the name MCG 5-4-18, is a nearby giant …

31 January 2019: Active asteroids blur the distinction between asteroids and comets. Like other asteroids, they orbit the Sun in a belt between Mars and Jupiter. But they can also “shape shift," unfurling spectacular comet-like tails, then packing them away again. Observations of P/2017 S5 made with the WIYN telescope identify it as a water-bearing active asteroid and a step toward understanding the origin of water on Earth. The study was carried out by a team led by D. Jewitt (UCLA) that includes NOAO astronomers Jayadev Rajagopal, Susan Ridgway, and Wilson Liu.

29 January 2019: Project & Science News After a 35-day partial shutdown, normal U.S. government operations have resumed until at least mid-February. LSST senior management staff will continue to work with AURA and the NSF to keep the Project moving forward and to minimize the effects of future disruptions. A magnitude 6.7 earthquake occurred in Chile on January 19, affecting the La Serena region. Electricity and communications were interrupted but quickly restored, and inspections by LSST staff revealed no significant damage. Thanks to LSST and Mountain Operations staff in Chile for ensuring the safety of people and equipment during and after the event. Following the 233rd AAS meeting in Seattle, the Project Science Team had a face-to-face meeting on January 10-11. After presentations by Amanda Bauer about updated EPO construction plans and by Lynne Jones about 46 submitted cadence white papers, the PST discussed software coordination across the Project, Project funding contingency levels, …

25 January 2019: The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), along with the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), are pleased to announce a transition plan for NOAO leadership through the rest of this year, following the departure of David Silva January 25. Lori Allen, Associate Director for Kitt Peak National Observatory, will serve as Acting NOAO Director. She will have the assistance of Adam Bolton (new Acting Deputy Director of NOAO and Associate Director for NOAO’s Community Science Data Center, CSDC) and Steve Heathcote (Associate Director of NOAO South and Director of Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, CTIO). Allen joined NOAO in 2009 from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and has served as Associate Director of Kitt Peak since 2014. In her new position, she will be responsible for top level management of NOAO and execution of the FY19 planned program as well as continuing in her role in the senior management …

15 January 2019: Project & Science News Reminder: The LSST Project Office in Tucson will be closed on Monday, January 21st, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr./Civil Rights Day. LSST had a significant presence at the 233rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). This year’s winter meeting took place in Seattle, WA, on January 6-10, with more than 3000 registrants. During the meeting, LSST team members staffed an exhibit booth and a job fair booth, facilitated two sessions of a tutorial on the LSST Science Pipelines, and hosted a town hall at which Charles Simonyi was a distinguished guest. More information is available in this recent news post, and Town Hall slides can be found here. The LSST Secondary Mirror (M2), which arrived at Cerro Pachón in December, has been inspected, declared free of damage from shipping, and moved into the LSST summit facility. It is currently being stored on the …

5 January 2019: The first detailed images of the most distant object ever explored reveal the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule to be a “contact binary” consisting of two connected spheres: “Ultima” the larger sphere and “Thule” the smaller. In making the discovery, New Horizons set a new bar for spacecraft navigation — never before has a spacecraft tracked down such a small body at such high speed so far away. NOAO Astronomer Tod Lauer played a critical role in the achievement.

2 January 2019: In preparation for its new mission as the home of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), the Kitt Peak Mayall telescope recently received its new top end, a 10 ton steel-framed structure that includes the new corrector barrel—a stacked array of large delicate lenses that creates a wide field-of-view—and will eventually house the 5000 robot fiber-positioners that will be used to capture the light from millions of galaxies and quasars. DESI will create the largest 3-D map of the cosmos to date and probe the role of dark energy in the expansion history of the Universe.

18 December 2018: Project & Science News Happy holidays and best wishes for the New Year from LSST! The next LSST News Digest will be distributed on January 15th, 2019. LSST will have representation at the 233rd AAS Meeting in Seattle, WA, January 7-10. If you’ll be attending the meeting and would like to help staff the LSST exhibitor booth (#113), or our Job Fair table (January 8, Noon-6:30 pm), please email us at communications-team@lists.lsst.org. We also encourage you to attend the LSST Town Hall on January 9th at 7:30 pm in room 6C. The latest LSST “Day in the Life” video is now available in the LSST Gallery, the fourth in a series that highlights the diversity of efforts undertaken by our distributed team. Thanks to everyone who contributed photos—keep up the good work. An update from the PLAsTiCC Astronomical Classification Challenge: The final submission deadline for the main Kaggle prize has …

17 December 2018: Extremely high-resolution speckle observations by Gemini South deliver critical details on a star (or stars) lying in the apparent path of remnants from the early formation of our Solar System. In early March of 2017 the outer Solar System object Orcus, and its one known satellite Vanth, were on an apparent collision course with a star – at least that’s the way it appeared from our perspective on Earth. Original calculations showed that Orcus would pass in front of a relatively bright star and temporarily block the star’s light. However, later refinements to the calculations revealed that the shadow of Vanth would trace a path across the Earth’s surface. These events, known as occultations, are only visible from a thin swath on Earth’s surface and calculations have small uncertainties due to observations of the orbits and estimates of the objects’ size. But even with these uncertainties, what happened surprised astronomers. …

15 December 2018: Gemini Observatory announces the opportunity for new Large and Long Programs, with observations beginning in the 2019B semester. Letters of Intent to propose a new Large and Long Program are due February 4, 2019. Completed Proposals are due April 1, 2019.

14 December 2018: Astronomers have announced the discovery of the most distant body ever observed in our Solar System. Nicknamed “Farout” for its extremely distant location, the new dwarf planet 2018 VG18 is 120 times further from the Sun than Earth (i.e., at 120 AU). In comparison, the dwarf planet Eris is at 96 AU and Pluto is currently at 34 AU. The discovery was made by astronomers Scott Sheppard, David Tholen, and Chad Trujillo as part of a survey of the outer Solar System carried out in part with observing time made available through NOAO.

4 December 2018: Project & Science News An attractive and functional LSST 2019 wall calendar is now available; pick one up at the LSST booth at the AAS Meeting in Seattle, January 7-10, or print your own copy by downloading the image from the LSST Gallery. We would like to extend our appreciation for the hard work put in by the LSST community in response to the Call for White Papers on LSST Cadence Optimization. We received 46 white papers that will help us explore variations on the survey strategy over the next two years. The LSST Science Advisory Committee are now starting their review, leading to recommendations on how to go forth when simulating these survey strategy options. The December 17th deadline is approaching for the Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC), and over 800 participating teams have registered so far. Learn more about the challenge in this video, recorded at …

3 December 2018: Work on the camera for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), bound for Cerro Pachon in Chile, recently reached a major milestone with the completion of the camera’s refrigeration system (a.k.a. its cryostat). Equipped with 3.2 gigapixels, the camera is the largest ever built for ground-based astronomy. NOAO is a founding partner of LSST and is developing tools and systems to support community research with LSST.

20 November 2018: Project & Science News The LSST Project Office wishes everyone a happy Thanksgiving holiday! The LSST Coating Chamber arrived on the summit of Cerro Pachón on November 11, safely completing a 15-week journey from Deggendorf, Germany, where it was constructed. The 128-ton Coating Chamber has now been integrated into the summit facility. Photos of the Coating Chamber during shipping, and upon arrival at the summit, are available in the LSST Gallery. The LSST Secondary Mirror (M2) System cargo was loaded aboard the BBC Challenger on November 12th at the port of Albany, NY. The ship departed for Chile the following day, heading back down the Hudson River. The vessel will travel nearly directly to the port of Coquimbo, Chile, and is due to arrive at the beginning of December. Preparations are underway to accommodate the mirror and associated cargo boxes on Cerro Pachón. Photos of M2 being loaded are available …

20 November 2018: Astronomers have discovered a large, extremely diffuse galaxy companion to the Milky Way. As big as the Large Magellanic Cloud but 10,000 times fainter, the galaxy has eluded us until now because of its faint, “ghostly” appearance and its hiding place behind the disk of the Milky Way. The discovery was made with the Gaia satellite and archival data from DECam on the CTIO Blanco telescope. Astronomers want to know: is this galaxy an oddball?...or one of many “ghostly” companions yet to be found? Long press or hover your mouse over the image above to view a labeled version.

13 November 2018: Pluto’s terrain shows a “washboard” pattern of fine ridges just north of its great frozen nitrogen sea, Sputnik Planitia. A recent study by the New Horizons team argues that the ridges are deposits of water ice left behind as an ancient frozen nitrogen glacier that once covered the area sublimed away. Water-ice is buoyant in nitrogen ice and is expected to collect in pits formed on the surface of the glacier as the nitrogen sublimes. NOAO Astronomer Tod Lauer is a coauthor on the study.

6 November 2018: Project & Science News A reminder: daylight saving time ended in the U.S. on Sunday, November 4th. The LSST Project uses Pacific Time as a standard, but Arizona clocks do not change, and Chile is on a different time change schedule. As a result, standing meeting times have changed for people in some locations but not others; please check with your meeting organizer to confirm the times for upcoming meetings. The deadline for the Call for White Papers on LSST Cadence Optimization is less than a month away; white papers must be submitted by November 30, 2018. Click here for more information. The LSST Coating Chamber arrived at the Port of Coquimbo, Chile, on October 23rd, ending a seven-week ocean voyage that began in Antwerp, Belgium. For four days after its arrival, the Coating Chamber was prepared, split into two pieces (top and bottom), and loaded onto specialized transport vehicles …

30 October 2018: Astronomers have discovered that the tiny Sextans dwarf galaxy, which is 100,000 times less massive than the Milky Way, is undergoing a merger with an even smaller companion galaxy. While large galaxies like the Milky Way are thought to form through mergers with smaller galaxies, the new result illustrates how even the smallest galaxies may form that way. The discovery was made with data from the 4-m Blanco Telescope at CTIO.

23 October 2018: Project & Science News Early in the morning on October 10, the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) Cell was moved from CAID Industries, where it was manufactured, to the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab on the University of Arizona campus. The Cell traveled on a vehicle provided by Precision Heavy Haul (PHH); personnel from PHH, CAID, the Mirror Lab, and LSST Project members made sure the Cell was transported and delivered safely. More information about the Cell move can be found in this recent news item. A week later, on October 18, the M1M3 Mirror was also moved to the Mirror Lab on a PHH truck. The Mirror had been in storage in a hangar at Million Air since its fabrication, which was completed in 2015. Now that both the Cell and the Mirror are in the Lab, the next step is the installation of the Mirror onto the M1M3 Cell using …