Press Releases: NOAO

9 January 2008: Observations of the interacting binary star using telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that the disks of hot gas that accumulate around a wide variety of astronomical objects—from degenerate stars in energetic binary systems to supermassive black holes at the hearts of active galaxies—are likely to be much larger than previously believed.

8 January 2008: A new wide-field image of Pickering’s Triangle taken with the National Science Foundation’s Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory is being released today in Austin, Texas, at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

28 May 2007: The GLOBE at Night 2007 citizen-science campaign generated nearly double the number of measurements of the world’s dark (and not so dark) skies compared to its first year. The program also successfully demonstrated a prototype digital data-collection effort that aims to grow to a global scale by 2009 during the International Year of Astronomy.

16 May 2007: A dynamic image of the nearby star-forming region NGC 1333 taken at Kitt Peak National Observatory is being released today in honor of the retirement celebration for Stephen Strom, a two-time staff member of the U.S. national observatory who has led a multifaceted life in astronomy, public policy, and the arts.

21 March 2007: Astronomer Buell T. Jannuzi has been named to five-year term as the director of Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.

7 March 2007: The international star-counting activity known as GLOBE at Night returns from March 8-21 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.

21 February 2007: A beautiful new image of spiral galaxy IC 342 that takes advantage of the dark night sky at Kitt Peak National Observatory is being released today in Washington, DC, at the opening of “The Night: Why Dark Hours Are So Important,” a two-day symposium hosted at the Carnegie Institution.

7 January 2007: The ghostly blue Bubble Nebula and a swan-like dark nebula known as Barnard 163 are featured in beautiful new images taken in 2006 using the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. The newly released images are displayed in large format at the NOAO exhibit booth starting today in Seattle at the 209th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

7 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.

14 November 2006: Astronomers have identified 20 new stellar systems in our local solar neighborhood, including the twenty-third and twenty-fourth closest stars to the Sun. When added to eight other systems announced by this team and six by other groups since 2000, the known population of the Milky Way galaxy within 33 light-years (10 parsecs) of Earth has grown by 16 percent in just the past six years.

3 November 2006: The National Science Foundation’s Astronomy Senior Review report, released today, contains a variety of recommendations related to the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

26 October 2006: The National Science Foundation’s Kitt Peak National Observatory and the Exploratorium are joining forces to present a live view of an unusual celestial event: the transit of planet Mercury across the face of the Sun, as seen from Earth.

14 September 2006: Kitt Peak National Observatory boasts the greatest number of research telescopes on one mountain anywhere in the world. In addition to the twenty-five optical and two radio telescopes, Kitt Peak also offers an attractive visitor center complete with exhibits, and a gift shop, daily telescope tours, and world-renowned nightly public observing programs by reservation. However, until now, there was no shuttle transportation available for those people who would prefer not driving up the winding mountain road to the observatory.

3 August 2006: A team led by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has been selected by NASA to develop a concept for a space mission to characterize the mysterious “Dark Energy” that permeates the Universe and causes its expansion to accelerate.

1 August 2006: As part of an ongoing search for Earth’s nearest stellar neighbors, astronomers have determined the distance to a stellar-like body known as DEN 0255-477 and discovered that it is the nearest-known L dwarf. This body is now also the faintest object outside our solar system for which its intrinsic visual brightness has been measured.

24 April 2006: More than 18,000 citizen-scientists in 96 countries submitted 4,591 observations of the darkness of their local night skies during the 10-day GLOBE at Night event last month.

8 March 2006: A dramatic new image of cometary globule CG4 marks the one-thousandth image posted to the online gallery hosted by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

2 March 2006: What does it mean to REALLY see the stars? When you look at the night sky, are you awed by an endless swath of glittering jewels set against a deep velvet-black sky? Or do you see only a dozen or so pinpricks of light doggedly shining through the soft amber glow of streetlamps? How can light “pollution” make such a difference in the way the sky looks?

25 January 2006: The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has awarded its 2006 Education Prize to Dr. Sidney Wolff, an astronomer and former director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

11 January 2006: An artist’s rendition shows a planet orbiting a very young, active star pocked with dark star spots and speckled with flares and other surface activity.