Press Releases

8 June 2006: Massive star supernovae have been major "dust factories" ever since the first generations of stars formed several hundred million years after the Big Bang, according to an international study to be published in Science magazine on July 14, 2006.

5 June 2006: These results were announced by two teams of researchers during a press conference at the meeting that also included the release of new images of the entire span of M31 obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Gemini teams included Canadian researcher Tim Davidge (NRC, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Victoria BC) and Knut Olsen of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). The new data about individual stars in M31 obtained with the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, demonstrate dramatically the complementarity of ground-based telescopes, which can record images with unprecedented spatial resolution, and space-based facilities, which have higher sensitivity.

4 June 2006: Two new images from Gemini Observatory released today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Calgary, Canada, show a pair of beautiful nebulae that were created by two very different types of stars at what may be similar points in their evolutionary timelines. One is a rare type of very massive spectral-type "O" star surrounded by material it ejected in an explosive event earlier in its life. It continues to lose mass in a steady "stellar wind." The other is a star originally more similar to our Sun that has lost its outer envelope following a "red giant" phase. It continues to lose mass via a stellar wind as it dies, forming a planetary nebula. The images were made using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South as part of the Gemini Legacy Imaging program.

17 May 2006: Cerro Pachón, an 8,800-foot (2,682-meter) mountain peak in northern Chile, has been selected as the site for the proposed Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).

3 May 2006: Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, Australian astronomers have found a predicted "companion" star left behind when its partner exploded as a very unusual supernova. The presence of the companion explains why the supernova, which started off looking like one kind of exploding star, seemed to change its identity after a few weeks.

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.

7 April 2006: A new Gemini Observatory image of NGC 246, nicknamed the "Skull Nebula," shows what can happen as the outer atmosphere of a fast-moving, dying star like the Sun (in several billion years) pushes through the complex soufflé of gas and dust that lies between the stars of our galaxy.

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.

10 January 2006: New Spitzer Space Telescope observations of an unusual class of interacting binary stars detected excess amounts of infrared radiation, suggesting that these odd objects are surrounded by large disks of cool dust.

10 January 2006: Strong darkening observed around the equator of Vega suggests that the fifth brightest star in Earth’s sky has a huge temperature difference of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit from its cool equatorial region to its hot poles.

9 January 2006: In a feat resembling an intergalactic autopsy, astronomers have used the Gemini South telescope in Chile to obtain a detailed spectrum of an echo of light from an ancient supernova that enables them to identify the original star’s cause of death.

9 January 2006: The glowing gas of the interstellar medium (ISM) is the breeding ground for the formation of new stars, and the cemetery where the ashes of dead stars ultimately return.

4 January 2006: The active galaxy NGC 1097 located about 47 million light-years away.

4 January 2006: A storm of billowing clouds blown by the winds from massive stars, and set aglow by their light, is the focus of a striking image released today by Gemini Observatory.

21 December 2005: A team of astronomers has found faint visible echoes of three ancient supernovae by detecting their centuries-old light as it is reflected by clouds of interstellar gas hundreds of light-years removed from the original explosions.

6 December 2005: More than half of the largest galaxies in the nearby universe have collided and merged with another galaxy in the past two billion years, according to a new study using hundreds of images from two of the deepest sky surveys ever conducted.

4 November 2005: A growing slate of public programs and related outreach activities has spurred the Visitor Center at Kitt Peak National Observatory to offer its first-ever membership program for the general public.