Press Releases: NOIRLab

27 November 2023: Through its Environmental Sustainability Program, NSF NOIRLab will reduce its entire annual carbon footprint by 50% by the end of 2027. This will be achieved through allocations of supplemental funding from the National Science Foundation towards installing solar panels and batteries at Gemini South and Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile as well as other upgrades at both NOIRLab’s Base and Summit facilities.

17 August 2023: A team of researchers, including NOIRLab astronomer André-Nicolas Chené, has found a highly unusual star that has the most powerful magnetic field ever found in a massive star — and that may become one of the most magnetic objects in the Universe: a variant of a neutron star known as a magnetar. This finding marks the discovery of a new type of astronomical object — a massive magnetic helium star — and sheds light on the origin of magnetars.

13 April 2023: A team of researchers, including an astronomer with NSF NOIRLab, has developed a new machine-learning technique to enhance the fidelity and sharpness of radio interferometry images. To demonstrate the power of their new approach, which is called PRIMO, the team created a new, high-fidelity version of the iconic Event Horizon Telescope's image of the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87, a giant elliptical galaxy located 55 million light-years from Earth.

13 July 2022: The Contreras Fire reached the Kitt Peak National Observatory during the early morning of Friday 17 June 2022. We are working with the firefighters at the site to assess the damage and will share details about the facilities as we learn more. We remain in an active fire situation with rapidly changing conditions.

5 November 2021: NSF NOIRLab fully supports the scientific vision of Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s and stands ready, along with our managing organization, AURA, to join our community in advocating for and contributing to the implementation of the survey’s recommendations. NOIRLab along with its partners are honored that the community has ranked the US Extremely Large Telescope Program as the highest ground-based priority in Pathways to Discovery.

2 November 2021: An astronomer from NSF NOIRLab has teamed up with a geologist from California State University, Fresno, to make the first estimates of rock types that exist on planets orbiting nearby stars. After studying the chemical composition of “polluted” white dwarfs, they have concluded that most rocky planets orbiting nearby stars are more diverse and exotic than previously thought, with types of rocks not found anywhere in our Solar System.