Announcements

22 October 2018: Discovered in part with DECam at CTIO, a new dwarf planet patrols the outer Solar System on a highly elongated orbit: it travels within 65 AU of the Sun at closest approach and as far away as 1000 AU. With its distant orbit, the small planet (300 kilometers in diameter) is sensitive to the dynamics at the edge of the Solar System — and the presence of more massive outer Solar System planets, such as the hypothetical Planet X.

18 October 2018: July 2nd 2019 will be a very special day in South America. On that day a total eclipse will travel from west to east across the continent and, in a spectacular stroke of astronomical luck, will pass directly over the National Science Foundation’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile – one of the most famous astronomy sites in the world. Cerro Tololo is a complex of astronomical telescopes and instruments located at an altitude of 7200 feet and part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). Science experiments conducted during a solar eclipse contribute rare and valuable data to our understanding of the Sun and its corona. Given the fortuitous passage of the eclipse path, AURA decided to open up the Cerro Tololo site to eclipse astronomers from around the world through a competition judged by solar physics experts from the National Solar Observatory. International teams of scientists applied for …

16 October 2018: Thanks to two allocations of Director’s Discretionary Time and a successful Fast-Turnaround program, an international team (including Gemini Emeritus Astronomer Tom Geballe, who wrote this summary on behalf of the team) used Gemini North/GNIRS to follow the evolution of the near-infrared spectrum of the core-collapse supernova 2017eaw (ccSN 2017eaw) over three semesters. The data obtained from this relatively nearby event may help us to better understand the existence of dusty galaxies in the early, much more distant Universe. One of the unexpected discoveries in studies of the very early Universe is that many high redshift galaxies are “dusty.” These dusty galaxies exist as recently as several hundred million to a billion years after the Big Bang. The origin of this dust is somewhat of a mystery, because stars with masses similar to the Sun, which constitute the vast majority of stars in a galaxy, would not have evolved to the …

15 October 2018: NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a “hot Earth” in orbit around a star 45 light years away. The planet, which is only 30% larger than Earth, orbits very close to its star, with a period of just 11 hours. The discovery was confirmed using multiple facilities including the CHIRON spectrograph on the SMARTS 1.5m telescope at CTIO.

10 October 2018: Project & Science News A group from the National Science Foundation (NSF) paid a productive visit to the LSST summit site on Cerro Pachón in late September to review construction progress and interact with LSST Project senior management staff. A group photo from the event is available in the LSST Gallery. The Laboratório Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia (LIneA) in Brazil held a meeting of the LSST Brazil Participation Group (BPG) on Sept 24-28. Representatives from LSST Data Management (DM), Communications, and Education and Public Outreach (EPO) were invited to present progress on their efforts, and to review the LIneA science and technical activities. A group photo from the event is available in the LSST Gallery, and the LSST presentations can be found at this link. The transport cart for the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) Cell Assembly has been completed at CAID Industries in Tucson, AZ. On the summit of Cerro Pachón, this …

28 September 2018: A nine-hour exposure of the McMath-Pierce Solar Facility on Kitt Peak. The normally white building appears red due to high altitude haze following the 1991 eruptions of Mount Pinatubo. No filters or multiple exposures were used. Credit: Bill Livingston & NOAO/AURA/NSF. A new $4.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been awarded to the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) for the development of a new “Windows on the Universe Center for Astronomy Outreach” at NSF’s Kitt Peak National Observatory. Located in the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope facility, an iconic structure that was once the world’s largest solar observatory, the center will provide the public with a new way to experience the cutting-edge research being carried out at Kitt Peak and NSF’s other astronomy facilities around the globe, including ground-based optical, radio, solar, and gravitational wave facilities. New Windows on the Universe for the Public The …

26 September 2018: Project & Science News The LSST Project Office is delighted to announce that Professor Zeljko Ivezic of the University of Washington has agreed to take on the role of Deputy Director of the LSST Construction Project, effective September 1, 2018. Read the announcement from Steve Kahn here. LSST Senior Management staff recently participated in a productive quarterly meeting of AURA’s Management Council for LSST (AMCL), which took place September 5-6 at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. Agenda items included an introduction of new members of the Council, and a discussion of the results of the recent NSF/DOE Joint Status Review for LSST. The Call for White Papers on LSST Cadence Optimization is still open; provide your input on LSST observing strategy by submitting before the November 30, 2018 deadline. Click here for more information. New photos of the LSST cryostat assembly, completed at SLAC in late June, are now …

19 September 2018: Multi-conjugate adaptive optics technology at Gemini South reveals that young galaxies, with large amounts of star formation, and actively growing central black holes, were relatively compact in the early Universe. A team of astronomers led by Dr. Mark Lacy (National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA) used advanced adaptive optics on the Gemini South telescope in Chile to obtain high-resolution near-infrared images of three fields from the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS). Their sample includes several ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) which the Herschel Space Observatory found to be undergoing large bursts of star formation within the first few billion years of the Big Bang. Such galaxies have hundreds of times the infrared luminosity of a normal galaxy such as the Milky Way. The high-resolution GeMS images reveal that the ULIRGs have messy, irregular structures indicating that they are the product of recent galactic interactions and mergers. Lacy explains, “The fact that …

11 September 2018: The slideshow above highlights images from the Legacy Surveys’ Data Release 7 (DR7), which covers more than a quarter of the sky. More DR7 images of galaxies in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies are available online.

6 September 2018: The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Jennifer Lotz as the next Director of the Gemini Observatory. Dr. Lotz begins a five-year appointment as Gemini Director starting October 1, 2018. Previously, Dr. Lotz held the position of associate astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). “Jennifer will continue Gemini’s innovative trajectory in this new era of astronomy,” said Dr. Matt Mountain. “Jennifer’s experience and leadership in a wide range of observational astrophysics is a great fit for Gemini’s future.” Dr. Mountain is President of AURA which manages Gemini on behalf of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the International Gemini participants which include the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Korea. “I’m excited by the science at the twin Gemini telescopes right now and by the opportunity to help Gemini Observatory make the most of its full potential,” …

5 September 2018: Project & Science News The LSST 2018 Project and Community Workshop, which took place in Tucson August 13-17, offered opportunities for face-to-face interactions between geographically distributed LSST project team members and members of the LSST science community. Photos of the event are now available in the LSST Gallery; read more about this year’s event here. LSST was represented at AURA’s booth at the recent International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly Meeting, held in Vienna August 20-31. A photo of the booth is available in the LSST Gallery. LSST Director Steve Kahn, Project Manager Victor Krabbendam, and Systems Engineering Manager Brian Selvy traveled to Spain during the week of August 20-24. While there, the team visited Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) vendor Asturfeito to discuss the schedule and preparations for Factory Acceptance Testing of the TMA, which will begin in September (click here for a group photo). Prior to the Asturfeito visit, …

3 September 2018: A research team has discovered that supernovae generated by red supergiants are often preceded by a bright flash, created when expanding gas from the supernova collides with a dense stellar wind launched by the star just before it explodes. To make their discovery, the team studied stars at the time of explosion, by scanning the skies rapidly for 14 nights using DECam on the NSF’s CTIO Blanco telescope. The result has been published in Nature Astronomy.

27 August 2018: Using the Gemini North telescope in Hawai`i, an international team of astronomers from Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK has discovered the most distant radio galaxy to date, at 12.5 billion light years, when the Universe was just 7% of its current age. The team used spectroscopic data from the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS-N) to measure a redshift of z = 5.72 for the radio galaxy identified as TGSS J1530+1049. This is the largest redshift of any known radio galaxy. The redshift of a galaxy tells astronomers its distance because galaxies at greater distances move away from us at higher speeds, and this motion causes the galaxy's light to shift farther into the red. Because light has a finite speed and takes time to reach us, more distant galaxies are also seen at earlier times in the history of the Universe. The study was led by graduate students Aayush …

17 August 2018: Project & Science News The LSST 2018 Project and Community Workshop is currently underway in Tucson, AZ, with over 300 people registered. The meeting concludes on August 17. Please note that Summer Daylight Saving Time began in Chile on August 11, on that day clocks in Chile advanced by one hour. The Call for White Papers on LSST Cadence Optimization continues, submittals must be received by November 30, 2018. The NSF/DOE Joint Status Review for LSST took place from July 31-August 3 in Tucson, AZ. Plenary presentations and breakout sessions for all LSST subsystems were scheduled for the first four days. On the final day, the review committee issued its recommendations and congratulated the Project team on its excellent progress to date. The Coating Chamber departed Deggendorf, Germany on a covered river barge headed to Antwerp, Belgium, with a planned arrival date of August 13. It is scheduled to begin …

13 August 2018: Speckle imaging observations made at the WIYN telescope on Kitt Peak have been used, in combination with data from other facilities, to confirm the existence of 44 exoplanets. Four of the planets have orbital periods shorter than a day. Sixteen have sizes within twice that of the Earth. The graphic illustrates the planetary sizes and surface temperatures and compares their orbital radii to that of Mercury. The discoveries were made by a team that includes NOAO astronomer Mark Everett. The observations were acquired under the NN-EXPLORE program, a joint program of the NSF and NASA for the discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets.

1 August 2018: Project & Science News LSST 2018, The Project and Community Workshop is just two weeks away! The meeting agenda is available at this link. A reminder that the call for white papers for LSST cadence optimization is ongoing, and the deadline is November 30, 2018. An LSST Town Hall has been approved for the 233rd AAS Meeting, January 6-10 in Seattle, WA. The Town Hall will take place on Wednesday, January 9 from 7:30-8:30 p.m. More details, including speakers and location, will be announced as they are available. The Education and Public Outreach (EPO) team hosted a teacher focus group in Tucson on July 16-18. This was the second in a series of events to collect feedback from educators about the formal education products being developed by the EPO team. Read more about the event in this recent news post, and view photos in the LSST Gallery. The washing station, …

30 July 2018: Observations made with DECam on the CTIO Blanco Telescope have led to the discovery of 12 additional moons of Jupiter, including its smallest known moon, Valetudo, less than one kilometer in diameter. Jupiter is now known to have 79 moons, a staggeringly large number compared to Earth’s single moon. In addition to its small size, Valetudo is also unusual because it orbits out of the plane of the other moons. Click the image to view a video of these newly discovered moons’ orbits.

23 July 2018: Light from a flashlight is dispersed into a spectrum by one of the spectrographs that will be integrated into the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at the 4-m Mayall telescope. Designed to acquire spectra of 5000 astronomical objects simultaneously, DESI will be equipped with ten three-armed spectrographs. DESI will explore the mysterious physics of dark energy, which is believed to accelerate the expansion of the Universe.

18 July 2018: Project & Science News Registration for LSST 2018 is now closed. Approximately 320 people registered for the meeting, the highest attendance number to date. The block agenda for the meeting is available at this link. The Camera team reports a major project accomplishment: in late June, construction of the Cryostat assembly was completed at SLAC. The assembly was moved to the SLAC IR2 Cleanroom Facility, where the Cryostat pump plate was attached, and the assembly underwent early vacuum-testing. A photo of the completed Cryostat is available in the LSST Gallery. The Camera team received the last sensor to be provided by the UA Imaging Technology Laboratory (ITL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on July 12. The second sensor vendor, which is providing the balance of sensors required by the project, has fewer than 25 sensors to complete. At BNL, assembly of science-raft tower modules (RTMs) using these sensors is moving …

17 July 2018: Scientists announced the discovery of 12 new moons orbiting the planet Jupiter, including one that bucks the trend by orbiting in the opposite direction from others of its ilk. Gemini observations confirmed this jovian oddball, dubbed Valetudo, after the great-granddaughter of the god Jupiter. The Gemini director’s discretionary observations were made using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope atop of Hawaii’s Maunakea. Read more about this discovery in the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) press release that follows. Scientists using National Science Foundation Observatories find 12 new moons of Jupiter Sometimes you find something you weren’t even looking for. A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Scott S. Sheppard, during a search to find very distant Solar System objects, just announced the discovery of twelve new moons orbiting Jupiter. The moons were first found in the spring of 2017 when the team was …