Announcements

19 March 2007: Worldwide measurements for GLOBE at Night 2007 have now exceeded the 4,591 measurements reported in the first global dark skies campaign 2006, with more than 5,000 measurements by citizen-scientists from 61 countries now being reported at the public Web site! Data collection for 2007 ends on March 21. For more, see NOAO Press Release 07-04.

15 March 2007: Astronomers using data from the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey have captured an image of more than a thousand supermassive black holes. These results give astronomers a snapshot of a crucial period when these monster black holes are growing, and provide insight into the environments in which they occur.

9 March 2007: There have been more than 2446 observations from 51 countries since the start of GLOBE at Night 2007 on March 8! This international star-counting activity comes in two flavors: the “classic” GLOBE at Night exercise that anyone can have fun doing with their unaided eyes, and a new effort to obtain precise measurements of urban dark skies using digital sky-brightness meters. For more, see NOAO Press Release 07-04.

2 March 2007: High Spectral Resolution in the Mid-Infrared with TEXES on Gemini, as illustrated by the above image, is one of the Science Highlights from the March 2007 issue of the NOAO/NSO Newsletter. Other stories include NEWFIRM first light, a progress report on how NOAO is implementing the Senior Review, and a new section on the NOAO Data Products Program.

2 March 2007: Mapping Gas Jet Velocities in the Molecular Cloud W51 IRS2 A team led by John Lacy of the University of Texas at Austin recently used the instrument TEXES on Gemini North to map the star-forming region IRS2 located deep within the molecular cloud associated with the giant H II region W51. The spatial and spectral performance of TEXES on Gemini allowed the team to separate the ionized gas into several components for the first time. These include: an extended HII region on the front surface of the molecular cloud, several embedded compact HII regions, and a streamer of high velocity gas. The team interpreted the high velocity streamer to be a precessing or fan-like jet that has emerged from the molecular cloud into an OB star cluster where it is being ionized. The source of the jet is unknown. The presence of such a jet coming from within the molecular …

21 February 2007: This beautiful new image of spiral galaxy IC 342 that takes advantage of the dark night sky at Kitt Peak National Observatory was released last week in Washington, DC, at the opening of “The Night: Why Dark Hours Are So Important,” a two-day symposium hosted at the Carnegie Institution. More in NOAO Press Release 07-03.

12 February 2007: The BNKL Nebula in the constellation Orion was one of the first targets of the initial science verification runs for the NOAO NEWFIRM infrared imager at the Mayall 4-meter telescope. This image is a portion of one full image, selected to show the fine detail that is already apparent.

5 February 2007: The NOAO Users Committee has submitted their 2006 report (login required).

31 January 2007: As seen from Cerro Pachón on 20 January 2007, with planet Venus and the Moon at lower right, and the Gemini South telescope.

23 January 2007: Register now for the Gemini Science 2007 meeting to be held June 11-13 in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. Circular fisheye lens image of Gemini North, with the Milky Way above. Credit: Gemini Observatory

19 January 2007: Marie-Claire Hainaut, a member of the Gemini science staff, was observing with the Gemini South telescope in central Chile on the night of January 18th when she captured this image of Comet McNaught in the twilight sky. The recently arrived Comet McNaught has put on a world-wide show over the last two weeks during its apparition in the western sky. Surprising even veteran comet researchers, McNaught has become the brightest comet visible in over 40 years. The image taken by Marie-Claire shows the bright nucleus low in the sky over the town of Andacollo in the foothills of the central Andes. The sweeping dust tail of the comet can be seen extending over 30 degrees toward the zenith. When asked about the image Marie-Claire noted, “When I went outside from the telescope control room and looked to the west I was stunned… The comet and its amazingly large tail were …

19 January 2007: January 19, 2007 New mid-infrared images of the Zeta Leporis circumstellar disk obtained with T-ReCS on Gemini South have for the first time revealed what researchers are calling an "exo-asteroid belt" around another star. Far from a passive dust disk, the new data show that there must be some sort of ongoing collisional activity within a few astronomical units (AU) of the star. These collisions sustain the replenishment of the small dust grains detected in the T-ReCS images. The results also lend support to the theory that the Zeta Leporis system contains a large reservoir of asteroid-sized bodies as well as the possibility of rocky planets. The team, lead by University of Florida Ph.D. student Margaret Moerchen and her advisor Charles Telesco, observed Zeta Leporis as part of a broader research program centered on the search for resolved circumstellar disks. The Gemini observations supplement previous observations made in 2001 that …

17 January 2007: This dark nebula that lies within IC 1396 was imaged with the Mosaic-1 imager on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Dr. Travis Rector explains how this image was created in this video podcast recorded at the recent AAS meeting in Seattle.

8 January 2007: Astronomers studying highly energetic binary stars called polars have obtained the first observational evidence that the intense magnetic fields produced by the white dwarf half of the interacting pair can induce flares, sunspots and other explosive activity in its otherwise low-wattage, low-mass partner.

28 December 2006: About 27 nights of observing time on the SOAR 4.1-meter telescope in Chile are expected to be available to the U.S. community in 2007B through the NOAO observing time allocation process.

21 December 2006: Happy Holidays from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

19 December 2006: A new series of images are now available that provide a "wide-eyed" view of the Gemini North telescope. The images were obtained as part of a program to capture a time-lapse sequence of the Gemini telescopes in operation during the course of one night. Each image shows a complete 180-degree view illuminated by moonlight (except for exterior views). All images were obtained using a circular format fisheye lens and ~50 second exposures to simulate the naked-eye view of the telescope at night.

15 December 2006: A team of US astronomers led by Sebastian Daemgen (University of Arizona) has just released the results of a search for low-mass brown dwarf or planetary companions around young early-type M dwarf stars within 20 parsecs of the Sun. The 41 stars in the survey have age estimates of < 300 million years, comparable to that of the Pleiades. Within the sample 13 objects are found to host fairly bright companions, eight of these (seven binaries and one triplet) are new discoveries (Figure 1). Understanding binarity or multiplicity rates in low-mass stellar systems could provide important clues on the formation of low-mass objects including planetary systems and their population of planets. The survey was conducted using The Gemini North adaptive optics system ALTAIR in its natural guide star (NGS) mode. The strategy of the survey was to target young stars in order to increase the probability of finding intrinsically faint …

12 December 2006: A British team led by Matt Burleigh (University of Leicester) and P. F. L. Maxted (Keele University) have discovered and characterized an extremely rare stellar system composed of a white dwarf and brown dwarf pair. Named WD 0137-349, this pairing is the only known close, detached binary system with a white dwarf and a confirmed substellar companion. The system is exceptionally intriguing given the measured orbital period of P = 116 minutes. Such a short period implies that the stars orbit within one solar radius from one another. This is close enough that the brown dwarf must have survived the period of common envelope evolution where it was completely engulfed by the atmosphere of the red giant progenitor of the white dwarf. Earlier work by Maxted et al. had already established a mass of 0.39 +/- 0.035 Msun for the white dwarf and of 0.053 +/- 0.006 Msun for the …

4 December 2006: includes articles on the NSF Senior Review report and our response, Gemini science in the mid infrared, new partnerships at CTIO, first light for the QUOTA imager at WIYN, and more.