Category: Observatories

British astronomers are celebrating a world first that could revolutionise the future of astronomy. They have just begun a project to operate a global network of the world’s biggest robotic telescopes, dubbed ‘RoboNet-1.0’ which will be controlled by intelligent software to provide rapid observations of sudden changes in astronomical objects, such as violent Gamma Ray Bursts, or 24-hour surveillance of interesting phenomena. RoboNet is also looking for Earth-like planets, as yet unseen elsewhere in our Galaxy.

Progress in many of the most exciting areas of modern astronomy relies on being able to follow up unpredictable changes or appearances of objects in the sky as rapidly as possible. It was this that led astronomers at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) to pioneer the development of a new generation of fully robotic telescopes, designed and built in the UK by Telescope Technologies Ltd.. Together the Liverpool Telescope (LT) and specially allocated time on the Faulkes North (FTN), soon to be joined by the Faulkes South (FTS), make up RoboNet-1.0.

Commenting on the need for a network of telescopes RoboNet Project Director, Professor Michael Bode of LJMU said “Although each telescope individually is a highly capable instrument, they are still limited by the hours of darkness, local weather conditions and the fraction of the sky each can see from its particular location on planet Earth.”

Prof. Bode added “Astronomical phenomena are however no respecters of such limitations, undergoing changes or appearances at any time, and possibly anywhere on the sky. To understand certain objects, we may even need round-the-clock coverage – something clearly impossible with a single telescope at a fixed position on the Earth’s surface.”

Thus was born the concept of “RoboNet” – a global network of automated telescopes, acting as one instrument able to search anywhere in the sky at any time and (by passing the observations of a target object from one telescope to the next in the network) being able to do so continuously for as long as is scientifically important.

The first mystery RoboNet will examine is the origin of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). Discovered by US spy satellites in the late 1960’s, these unpredictable events are the most violent explosions since the Big Bang, far more energetic than supernova explosions. Yet they are extremely brief, lasting from milliseconds to a few minutes, before they fade away to an afterglow lasting a few hours or weeks. Their exact cause is still unknown, although the collapse of supermassive stars or the coalescence of exotic objects such as black holes and neutron stars are prime candidates. To study GRBs, telescopes need to be pointed at the right area of the sky extremely quickly.

In October this year, NASA will launch a new satellite named Swift, in which the UK has a major involvement, and which will pinpoint the explosions of GRBs on the sky more accurately and rapidly than ever before. The co-ordinates of each burst will be relayed to telescopes on the Earth, including those of RoboNet, within seconds of their occurrence, at the rate of one event every few days. Telescopes within the UK’s new RoboNet network are designed to respond automatically within a minute of an alert from Swift. It is in the first few minutes after the burst that observations are urgently required to enable astronomers to really understand the cause of these immense explosions, but until now such observations have been extremely difficult to secure.

RoboNet’s second major aim is to discover Earth-like planets around other stars. We now know of more than 100 extra-solar planets. However, all of these are massive planets (like Jupiter) and many are too near to their parent star, and hence too hot, to support life. RoboNet will take advantage of a phenomenon called gravitational microlensing (where light from a distant star is bent and amplified around an otherwise unseen foreground object) to detect cool planets. When a star that is being lensed in this way has a planet, it causes a short ‘blip’ in the light detected, which rapid-reacting telescopes such as the RoboNet network can follow up. In fact, the network stands the best chance of any existing facility of actually finding another Earth due to the large size of the telescopes, their excellent sites and sensitive instrumentation.

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) have funded the establishment of RoboNet-1.0, based around using the three giant robotic telescopes at their sites across the globe. The “glue” that holds all this together is software developed by the LJMU-Exeter University “eSTAR” project, allowing the network to act intelligently in a co-ordinated manner.

Dr Iain Steele of the eSTAR project says “We have been able to use and develop new Grid technologies, which will eventually be the successor to the World Wide Web, to build a network of intelligent agents that can detect and respond to the rapidly changing universe much faster than any human. The agents act as “virtual astronomers” collecting, analysing and interpreting data 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, alerting their flesh-and-blood counterparts only when they make a discovery.”

If successful, RoboNet could be expanded to the development of a larger, dedicated global network of up to six robotic telescopes.

Professor Michael Bode of Liverpool John Moores University adds “We have led the world in the design and build of the most advanced robotic telescopes and now with RoboNet-1.0 we are set to lead the way in some of the most challenging and exciting areas of modern astrophysics”.

Original Source: PPARC News Release

What is the biggest telescope in the world?

The Nearby Supernova Factory, an international collaboration of astronomers and astrophysicists, has announced that SNIFS, the Supernova Integral Field Spectrograph, achieved “first light” during the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 8, when the new instrument acquired its first astronomical target, a Type Ia supernova designated SN 2004ca. Type Ia supernovae are the kind used by astronomers to measure the expansion of the universe.

Analysis of the initial data, plus a separate observation of the newly discovered supernova SN 2004cr on Sunday, June 20th, confirm that SNIFS ? while still in its commissioning phase ? is meeting its design goals as a remarkable new tool for observing supernovae.

SNIFS, which was recently mounted on the University of Hawaii’s 2.2-meter telescope atop Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii, is an innovative instrument designed to track down the idiosyncrasies and precise distances of Type Ia supernovae by simultaneously obtaining over 200 spectra of each target, its home galaxy, and the nearby night sky.

SNIFS is a crucial element in the international Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory), initiated at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The SNfactory’s goal is to find and study over 300 nearby Type Ia supernovae in order to reduce uncertainties about these foremost astronomical “standard candles,” whose measurement led to the discovery that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.

“Better knowledge of these extraordinarily bright and remarkably uniform objects will make them even better tools for measuring the cosmos,” says astronomer Greg Aldering of Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division, who leads the SNfactory collaboration. “Type Ia supernovae are the key to understanding the mysterious dark energy that’s causing the universe to expand ever faster.”

The body of the SNIFS instrument was built by the SNfactory’s French collaborators, members of the Laboratoire de Physique Nucl?aire et de Haute Energies (LPNHE) in Paris, the Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon (CRAL), and the Institut de Physique Nucl?aire de Lyon (INPL), supported by the Institut National de Physique Nucl?aire et de Physique des Particules (CNRS/IN2P3) and the Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers (CNRS/INSU). Berkeley Lab, with help from Yale University, developed the cameras used to detect the light from SNIFS, while the University of Chicago developed instruments to monitor the performance of SNIFS.

The SNIFS instrument produces a spectrum at each position within a six- by six-arc-second region around the target supernova, including its home galaxy and surrounding sky, by using an “integral field unit” consisting of an array of individual lenslets. Light is extracted from the telescope’s field of view by a small prism and directed to either blue-sensitive or red-sensitive, eight-megapixel, astronomical CCD cameras. Together these cameras collect all the optical light from each supernova.

A separate photometry camera, running in parallel with the spectrograph under identical observing conditions, allows spectra to be corrected for variables like thin cloud cover. A guide camera keeps the spectrograph precisely aligned on target by measuring the position of a guide star within the telescope’s wider field of view once each second, adjusting the aim if necessary.

Flown to Hilo in March and assembled in working order at sea level, SNIFS was taken apart, carried to the 4,245-meter (nearly 14,000-foot) summit of Mauna Kea, and reassembled on the University of Hawaii’s 2.2-meter telescope on April 6.

“At sea level we made sure everything was in order and also rehearsed the assembly,” says Aldering. “When you get to 14,000 feet things get tricky. Everybody carries a ‘dumb list’ so they don’t start off to do something and then forget what it was.”

Two months of engineering to align and calibrate the instrument on the telescope preceded SNIFS observation of its first new Type Ia supernova, SN 2004ca, on June 8th, in the constellation Cygnus, the swan. This was followed by the observation of SN 2004cr in the constellation Cepheus, the king, on June 20th. Shortly routine observations of SNfactory-discovered supernovae will begin.

“Now that SNIFS is in regular operation,” Aldering says, “our daily lives have changed dramatically.” After years of planning and long-distance meetings, including monthly videoconferences, “the activity level has escalated ? every day we have to react instantly as our new supernova data come pouring in.”

A full schedule ahead
The SNfactory strategy has two “pipelines,” the first being a supernova search using automated wide-field sky surveys. Data are provided by the QUEST-II 160-megapixel camera, built by Yale University and Indiana University and operated at Palomar Observatory by the QUEST-II group, as well as by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Near Earth Asteroid Tracking team and the California Institute of Technology. The data are transmitted by the High-Performance Research and Education Network to the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab for identification of likely supernova candidates.

The ideal candidate is a recently exploded Type Ia supernova that is near enough for accurate measurement of its spectrum and light curve (its rising and falling brightness) but far enough away to be “in the smooth Hubble flow” ? meaning that its redshift is mostly due to the expansion of the universe alone, unaffected by the motion of its home galaxy through space.

The SNfactory’s search phase has been operating for over a year, although not at full capacity. “The search will now be going full steam,” Aldering says. “We’ll be getting a few candidates each night of the year ? more than the entire current worldwide rate of discovery.”

SNIFS is mounted on the University of Hawaii’s 2.2-meter telescope atop Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii.

The second SNfactory pipeline passes the search candidates on to SNIFS, where the type and redshift of each supernova are determined and the most promising are selected and scheduled for more detailed study. The SNfactory uses the University of Hawaii’s telescope three times a week for half a night ? the half beginning at midnight, as a courtesy to local observers ? with SNIFS available to other projects at other times.

Eventually SNIFS will operate fully automatically. Remote control of the telescope and spectrograph was first done from Hilo, Hawaii and is now being done from Berkeley Lab and France.

SNIFS can determine a given Type Ia’s specific physical characteristics including, for example, whether or not it is unusually energetic or how much its light may have been dimmed by dust in its home galaxy. Such unparalleled spectrographic and photometric detail makes it possible to take advantage of a unique characteristic of Type Ia supernovae: that “they can be calibrated individually, not simply statistically,” Aldering says. “We’ll be able to measure the luminosity with confidence. Knowing the luminosity, we can tell you the distance with precision.”

By collecting large numbers of Type Ia supernovae in the Hubble flow, SNfactory scientists will be able to pin down the low-redshift end of the luminosity-redshift diagram upon which measures of the universe’s expansion rate are based. This, plus detailed understanding of the physical factors that cause small variations in Type Ia spectra and light curves, will improve the accuracy of the high-redshift measurements crucial to choosing among the many competing theoretical models of dark energy.

Members of the Nearby Supernova Factory team include Greg Aldering, Peter Nugent, Saul Perlmutter, Lifan Wang, Brian C. Lee, Rollin Thomas, Richard Scalzo, Michael Wood-Vasey, Stewart Loken, and James Siegrist from Berkeley Lab; Jean-Pierre Lemonnier, Arlette Pecontal, Emmanuel Pecontal, Christophe Bonnaud, Lionel Capoani, Dominique Dubet, Francois Heunault, and Blandine Lantz from CRAL; Gerard Smadja, Emmanuel Gangler, Yannick Copin, Sebastien Bongard, and Alain Castera from INPL; Reynald Pain, Pierre Antilogus, Pierre Astier, Etienne Barrelet, Gabriele Garavini, Sebastien Gilles, Luz-Angela Guevara, Didier Imbault, Claire Juramy, and Daniel Vincent from LPNHE; and Rick Kessler and Ben Dilday from the University of Chicago. Recently the astrophysics group at Yale University, under the leadership of Charles Baltay, has joined the Nearby Supernova Factory.

The Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at http://www.lbl.gov.

Original Source: Berkeley Lab News Release

Image credit: Gemini
To investors looking for the next sure thing, the silver coating on the Gemini South 8-meter telescope mirror might seem like an insider’s secret tip-off to invest in this valuable metal for a huge profit. However, it turns out that this immense mirror required less than two ounces (50 grams) of silver, not nearly enough to register on the precious metals markets. The real return on Gemini’s shiny investment is the way it provides unprecedented sensitivity from the ground when studying warm objects in space.

The new coating-the first of its kind ever to line the surface of a very large astronomical mirror-is among the final steps in making Gemini the most powerful infrared telescope on our planet. “There is no question that with this coating, the Gemini South telescope will be able to explore regions of star and planet formation, black holes at the centers of galaxies and other objects that have eluded other telescopes until now,” said Charlie Telesco of the University of Florida who specializes in studying star- and planet-formation regions in the mid-infrared.

Covering the Gemini mirror with silver utilizes a process developed over several years of testing and experimentation to produce a coating that meets the stringent requirements of astronomical research. Gemini’s lead optical engineer, Maxime Boccas who oversaw the mirror-coating development said, “I guess you could say that after several years of hard work to identify and tune the best coating, we have found our silver lining!”

Most astronomical mirrors are coated with aluminum using an evaporation process, and require recoating every 12-18 months. Since the twin Gemini mirrors are optimized for viewing objects in both optical and infrared wavelengths, a different coating was specified. Planning and implementing the silver coating process for Gemini began with the design of twin 9-meter-wide coating chambers located at the observatory facilities in Chile and Hawaii. Each coating plant (originally built by the Royal Greenwich Observatory in the UK) incorporates devices called magnetrons to “sputter” a coating on the mirror. The sputtering process is necessary when applying multi-layered coatings on the Gemini mirrors in order to accurately control the thickness of the various materials deposited on the mirror’s surface. A similar coating process is commonly used for architectural glass to reduce air-conditioning costs and produce an aesthetic reflection and color to glass on buildings, but this is the first time it has been applied to a large astronomical telescope mirror.

The coating is built up in a stack of four individual layers to assure that the silver adheres to the glass base of the mirror and is protected from environmental elements and chemical reactions. As anyone with silverware knows, tarnish on silver reduces the reflection of light. The degradation of an unprotected coating on a telescope mirror would have a profound impact on its performance. Tests done at Gemini with dozens of small mirror samples over the past few years show that the silvered coating applied to the Gemini mirror should remain highly reflective and usable for at least a year between recoatings.

In addition to the large primary mirror, the telescope’s 1-meter secondary mirror and a third mirror that directs light into scientific instruments were also coated using the same protected silver coatings. The combination of these three mirror coatings as well as other design considerations are all responsible for the dramatic increase in Gemini’s sensitivity to thermal infrared radiation.

A key measure of a telescope’s performance in the infrared is its emissivity (how much heat it actually emits compared to the total amount it can theoretically emit) in the thermal or mid-infrared part of the spectrum. These emissions result in a background noise against which astronomical sources must be measured. Gemini has the lowest total thermal emissivity of any large astronomical telescope on the ground, with values under 4% prior to receiving its silver coating. With this new coating, Gemini South’s emissivity will drop to about 2%. At some wavelengths this has the same effect on sensitivity as increasing the diameter of the Gemini telescope from 8 to more than 11 meters! The result is a significant increase in the quality and amount of Gemini’s infrared data, which allows detection of objects that would otherwise be lost in the noise generated by heat radiating from the telescope. It is common among other ground-based telescopes to have emissivity values in excess of 10%

The recoating procedure was successfully performed on May 31, and the newly coated Gemini South mirror has been re-installed and calibrated in the telescope. Engineers are currently testing the systems before returning the telescope to full operations. The Gemini North mirror on Mauna Kea will undergo the same coating process before the end of this year.

Why Silver?
The reason astronomers wish to use silver as the surface on a telescope mirror lies in its ability to reflect some types of infrared radiation more effectively than aluminum. However, it is not just the amount of infrared light that is reflected but also the amount of radiation actually emitted from the mirror (its thermal emissivity) that makes silver so attractive. This is a significant issue when observing in the mid-infrared (thermal) region of the spectrum, which is essentially the study of heat from space. ?The main advantage of silver is that it reduces the total thermal emission of the telescope. This in turn increases the sensitivity of the mid-infrared instruments on the telescope and allows us to see warm objects like stellar and planetary nurseries significantly better,? said Scott Fisher a mid-infrared astronomer at Gemini.

The advantage comes at a price however. To use silver, the coating must be applied in several layers, each with a very precise and uniform thickness. To do this, devices called magnetrons are used to apply the coating. They work by surrounding an extremely pure metal plate (called the target) with a plasma cloud of gas (argon or nitrogen) that knocks atoms out from the target and deposits them uniformly on the mirror (which rotates slowly under the magnetron). Each layer is extremely thin; with the silver layer only about 0.1 microns thick or about 1/200 the thickness of a human hair. The total amount of silver deposited on the mirror is approximately equal to 50 grams.

Studying Heat Originating from Space
Some of the most intriguing objects in the universe emit radiation in the infrared part of the spectrum. Often described as “heat radiation,” infrared light is redder than the red light we see with our eyes. Sources that emit in these wavelengths are sought after by astronomers since most of their infrared radiation can pass through clouds of obscuring gas dust and reveal secrets otherwise shrouded from view. The infrared wavelength regime is split into three main regions, near- , mid- and far-infrared. Near-infrared is just beyond what the human eye can see (redder than red), mid-infrared (often called thermal infrared) represents longer wavelengths of light usually associated with heat sources in space, and far-infrared represents cooler regions.

Gemini’s silver coating will enable the most significant improvements in the thermal infrared part of the spectrum. Studies in this wavelength range include star- and planet-formation regions, with intense research that seeks to understand how our own solar system formed some five billion years ago.

Original Source: Gemini News Release

Image credit: ESA
An agreement between ESA and seven Member States to jointly build a major part of the MIRI instrument, which will considerably extend the capability of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), was signed, 8 June 2004.

This agreement also marks a new kind of partnership between ESA and its Member States for the funding and implementation of payload for scientific space missions.

MIRI, the Mid-Infrared Instrument, is one of the four instruments on board the JWST, the mission scheduled to follow on the heritage of Hubble in 2011. MIRI will be built in cooperation between Europe and the United States (NASA), both equally contributing to its funding. MIRI?s optics, core of the instrument, will be provided by a consortium of European institutes. According to this formal agreement, ESA will manage and co-ordinate the whole development of the European part of MIRI and act as the sole interface with NASA, which is leading the JWST project.

This marks a difference with respect to the previous ESA scientific missions. In the past the funding and the development of the scientific instruments was agreed by the participating ESA Member States on the basis of purely informal arrangements with ESA. In this case, the Member States involved in MIRI have agreed on formally guaranteeing the required level of funding on the basis of a multi-lateral international agreement, which still keeps scientists in key roles.

Over the past years, missions have become more complex and demanding, and more costly within an ever tighter budget. They also require a more and more specific expertise which is spread throughout the vast European scientific community. As a result, a new management procedure for co-ordination of payload development has become a necessity to secure the successful and timely completion of scientific space projects. ESA?s co-ordination of the MIRI European consortium represents the first time such an approach has been used, which will be applied to the future missions of the ESA long-term Science Programme ? the ?Cosmic Vision?. The technology package for LISA (LTP), an ESA/NASA mission to detect gravitational waves, is already being prepared under the same scheme.

Sergio Volonte, ESA Co-ordinator for Astrophysics and Fundamental Physics Missions, comments: ?I?m delighted for such an achievement between ESA and its Member States. With MIRI we will start an even more effective co-ordination on developing our scientific instruments, setting a new framework to further enhance their excellence.?

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is a partnership between ESA, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. Formerly known as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), it is due to be launched in August 2011, and it is considered the successor of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It is three times larger and more powerful than its predecessor and it is expected to shed light on the ‘Dark Ages of the Universe’ by studying the very distant Universe, observing infrared light from the first stars and galaxies that ever emerged.

MIRI (Mid-Infrared Camera-Spectrograph) is essential for the study of the old and distant stellar population; regions of obscured star formation; hydrogen emission from previously unthinkable distances; the physics of protostars; and the sizes of ?Kuiper belt? objects and faint comets.

Further to the contribution to MIRI, Europe through ESA is contributing to JWST with the NIRSPEC (Near-Infrared multi-object Spectrograph) instrument (fully funded and managed by ESA) and, as agreed in principle with NASA, with the Ariane 5 launcher. The ESA financial contribution to JWST will be about 300 million Euros, including the launcher. The European institutions involved in MIRI will contribute about 70 million Euros overall.

The European institutions who signed the MIRI agreement with ESA are: the Centre Nationale des Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the Danish Space Research Institute (DSRI), the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci?n y Ciencia (MEC), the Nederlandse Onderzoekschool voor Astronomie (NOVA), the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) and the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB).

Four European countries, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and Switzerland contribute to MIRI through their participation into ESA?s Scientific Experiment Development programme (PRODEX). This is an optional programme, mainly used by smaller countries, by which they delegate to ESA the management of funding to develop scientific instruments.

The delivery to NASA of the MIRI instrument is due for March 2009.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Image credit: Cornell
The Arecibo Observatory telescope, the largest and most sensitive single dish radio telescope in the world, is about to get a good deal more sensitive.

Today (Wednesday, April 21) the telescope got a new “eye on the sky” that will turn the huge dish, operated by Cornell University for the National Science Foundation, into the equivalent of a seven-pixel radio camera.

The complex new addition to the Arecibo telescope was hauled 150 meters (492 feet) above the telescope’s 1,000-foot-diameter (305 meters) reflector dish starting in the early morning hours. The device, the size of a washing machine, took 30 minutes to reach a platform inside the suspended Gregorian dome, where ultimately it will be cooled and then connected to a fiber optic transmission system leading to ultra-high speed digital signal processors. The new instrument is called ALFA (for Arecibo L-Band Feed Array) and is essentially a camera for making radio pictures of the sky. ALFA will conduct large-scale sky surveys with unprecedented sensitivity, enabling astronomers to collect data about seven times faster than at present, giving the telescope an even broader appeal to astronomers.

The ALFA receiver was built by the Australian research group, Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation, under contract to the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y. Development of ALFA was overseen by the observatory’s technical staff. The rest of the ALFA system, including ultra-fast data processing machines, are under development at NAIC.

Radio telescopes traditionally have been limited to seeing just one spot — a single pixel — on the sky at once. Pictures of the sky have been built up by painstakingly imaging one spot after another. But ALFA lets the telescope see seven spots — seven pixels — on the sky at once, slashing the time needed to make all-sky surveys. Steve Torchinsky, ALFA project manager at Arecibo Observatory, says the new device will make it possible to find many new fast-spinning, highly dense stars called pulsars and will improve the chances of picking up very rare kinds of systems — for instance, a pulsar orbiting a black hole.

It also will map the neutral hydrogen gas in our galaxy, the Milky Way, as well as in other galaxies. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. “A whole range of science is planned for ALFA, ” says Torchinsky. “Arecibo’s large collecting area is particularly well-suited to pulsar studies.”

NAIC commissioned CSIRO to build ALFA following the success of a ground-breaking “multibeam” instrument it had designed and built for the Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia. That instrument increased the Parkes telescope’s view 13-fold, making it practical for the first time to search the whole sky for faint and hidden galaxies.

Original Source: Cornell News Release

Image credit: SuperWasp
A consortium of astronomers is tomorrow (April 16th) celebrating the commissioning of the SuperWASP facility at the astronomical observatory on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, designed to detect thousands of planets outside of our own solar system.

Only about a hundred extra-solar planets are currently known, and many questions about their formation and evolution remain unanswered due to the lack of observational data. This situation is expected to improve dramatically as SuperWASP produces scientific results.

The SuperWASP facility is now entering its operational phase. Construction of the instrument began in May 2003, and in autumn last year the first test data was obtained which showed the instrument’s performance to exceed initial expectations.

SuperWASP is the most ambitious project of its kind anywhere in the world. Its extremely wide field of view combined with its ability to measure brightness very precisely allows it to view large areas of the sky and accurately monitor the brightnesses of hundreds of thousands of stars.

If any of these have nearby Jupiter-sized planets then they may move across the face of their parent star, as viewed from the Earth. While no telescope could actually see the planet directly, its passage or transit, blocks out a small proportion of the parent star’s light i.e. we see the star get slightly fainter for a few hours. In our own solar system a similar phenomenon will occur on 8th June 2004 when Venus will transit the Sun’s disk.

One nights’ observing with SuperWASP will generate a vast amount of data, up to 60 GB – about the size of a typical modern computer hard disk (or 42000 floppy disks). This data is then processed using sophisticated software and stored in a public database within the Leicester Database and Archive Service of the University of Leicester.

The Principal Investigator for the Project, Dr Don Pollacco (Queens University Belfast), said “While the construction and initial commissioning phases of the facility have been only 9 months long, SuperWASP represents the culmination of many years work from astronomers within the WASP consortium. Data from SuperWASP will lead to exciting progress in many areas of astronomy, ranging from the discovery of planets around nearby stars to the early detection of other classes of variable objects such as supernovae in distant galaxies”.

Dr Ren? Rutten (Director of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes) said “SuperWASP is a very nice example of how clever ideas to exploit the latest technology can open new windows to explore the universe around us, and shows that important scientific programmes can be done at very modest cost.”

The history of the project over the last ten years including the exciting discovery of the Sodium Tail of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997 can be found at http://www.superwasp.org/history.html and enclosed web links.

The SuperWASP facility is operated by the WASP consortium involving

astronomers from the following institutes: Queen’s University Belfast, University of Cambridge, Instituto de Astrof?sica de Canarias, Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (La Palma), University of Keele, University of Leicester, Open University and University of St Andrews.

The SuperWASP instrument has cost approximately ?400K, and was funded by major financial contributions from Queen’s University Belfast, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Open University. SuperWASP is located in the Spanish Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, Canary Islands which is operated by the Instituto de Astrof?sica de Canarias (IAC).

Pictures of the SuperWASP facility and some of its astronomical first-light images are available at http://www.superwasp.org/firstlight.html

Original Source: PPARC News Release

Image credit: UA
The University of Arizona today announced that the first 8.4-meter (27-foot) primary mirror for the world?s most powerful telescope, the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), has successfully been installed in the telescope structure at Arizona?s Mount Graham International Observatory (MGIO).

The 18-ton mirror made its 150-mile journey from Tucson to the top of Mount Graham near Safford, Ariz., in October 2003. Now the mirror has been installed in the telescope, and technicians are testing intricate mirror support system hardware and software in preparation for telescope “first light.” First light, or when the mirror collects its first celestial light, is expected later this year.

The deeply parabolic mirror was cast and figured at the University of Arizona?s renowned Steward Observatory Mirror Lab and is the first of two identical giant mirrors that will make up the LBT. The mirrors are much larger and lighter than conventional solid-glass mirrors used in the past. Both together are valued at $22 million.

Each LBT mirror is a “honeycomb” structure made out of borosilicate glass that was melted, molded, and spun into shape in a specially designed rotating oven. Once cast, the first mirror was polished to near perfection using the Mirror Lab’s innovative “stressed-lap” technique. The mirror surface matches the desired shape to within a millionth of an inch over its entire surface. The Mirror Lab is currently polishing the second primary mirror.

After the first mirror was moved to the telescope structure late last year, engineers spent more than two months testing and perfecting mirror installation procedures using a dummy mirror in the actual mirror “cell,” or mirror support structure. The mirror was then installed in the cell and, in precise operations that required maneuvering the mirror and cell through a hatchway between building floors with only inches to spare, LBT workers lifted the mirror onto the telescope structure. The telescope is housed in an innovative 16-story rotating enclosure.

John M. Hill, LBT Project director, said, ?This is a huge step in what has been a very long and challenging process and would not have been possible without the support of a great team. From construction of our unique telescope structure to the implementation of this massive mirror, every step has involved great minds using cutting-edge technology. The remarkable success we have had so far is a tribute to the creative efforts of our team members.?

Work on the $100 million LBT project began with construction of the telescope building in 1996 and will be completed in 2005. The project is entirely funded by the LBT Corp., an international consortium of scientific and academic institutions. When the LBT is fully operational, it will be the world?s most technologically advanced optical telescope, creating images expected to be nearly 10 times sharper than images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Peter A. Strittmatter, president of the LBT Corp., said, ?The twin mirrors of the LBT will have the light gathering capabilities of an 11.8 meter (39-foot) conventional telescope. This is an exciting time for everyone who has been involved in this pioneering effort. The LBT will provide unprecedented views of our universe, including for the first time, the ability to image planets far beyond our solar system. I believe this is the first of the next generation of extremely large telescopes and will signal the beginning of a new golden era in this type of space exploration.?

The LBT project is managed by the LBT Corp., a partnership that includes the University of Arizona; Ohio State University; the Research Corp.; the LBTB, a German consortium of astronomical research institutes; and the INAF, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. The LBT Corp. was established in 1992 to undertake the construction and operation of the LBT.

Original Source: UA News Release

Image credit: ULTRACAM
Although there are numerous telescopes – both large and small – examining the night sky at any one time, the heavens are so vast and so densely populated with all manner of exotic objects that it is extremely easy to overlook a significant random event. Fortunately, a new generation of scientific instruments is now enabling UK astronomers to prepare for the unexpected and become leaders in so-called “Time Domain Astrophysics”.

Exciting new observations of many different, time-variable celestial objects, ranging from black hole X-ray binaries to flare stars and Saturn’s moon Titan will be presented at a Royal Astronomical Society Specialist Discussion Meeting on Friday, 13 February (details below). The meeting will also feature presentations on several ground-breaking UK instruments which make these observations possible.

The Universe around us is constantly changing. Sometimes, the map of the heavens is rewritten by sudden, violent events such as gamma ray bursts (GRBs) and supernovae. Sometimes, a wandering near-Earth asteroid or a gravitational lensing event makes its unpredictable appearance. Most frequently, a star will undergo a modest fluctuation in optical brightness or energy output.

Observing such apparitions and variations can unlock the secrets of a wide variety of the most intriguing and important astronomical objects. Unfortunately, it has proved surprisingly difficult to undertake the type of observations that are required using conventional telescopes and their instruments to solve many outstanding puzzles.

In order to understand these types of phenomena, it is necessary to conduct long term monitoring programmes or to be able to react within minutes to chance discoveries made by other observatories or spacecraft.

“A new generation of facilities, designed and built in the UK, is poised to give the nation’s astronomers a world-leading position in what is dubbed the ‘Time Domain’,” said Professor Mike Bode of Liverpool John Moores University, co-organiser with Professor Phil Charles (Southampton University) of the Royal Astronomical Society meeting about the latest technological breakthroughs in observational astronomy.

This new generation includes the “ULTRACAM” high speed camera, which is being used on various front-rank telescopes around the world. A collaboration between Sheffield and Warwick Universities and the Astronomy Technology Centre, Edinburgh, ULTRACAM can observe changes in brightness lasting only a few thousandths of a second. It has been used to explore the environments of objects as diverse as the atmosphere of Saturn’s smog-shrouded moon, Titan, to the last gasps of gas spiralling into black holes.

Another pioneering instrument is “Super WASP”, a novel telescope comprising effectively five wide-angle cameras. Led by astronomers from a consortium of UK universities, including Queens Belfast, Cambridge, Leicester, Open, and St Andrews, as well as the Isaac Newton Group on La Palma in the Canary Islands, the first Super WASP began operations on La Palma in November 2003.

With its very wide field of view, the telescope can image at any one time an area of sky equivalent to around 1,000 times that of the full Moon. In this way, it is able to observe hundreds of thousands of stars per night, looking for changes in brightness, and discovering new objects. In particular, Super WASP will play a key role in the search for planets in other star systems as they cross the face of their parent star and the flashes of light that may accompany the most dramatic, and enigmatic, explosions since the Big Bang – the so-called Gamma Ray Bursters. In the course of its work, Super WASP will also discover countless asteroids in our own Solar System.

The third of the new facilities is the Liverpool Telescope (LT) on La Palma, pioneering the next-generation robotic telescopes that is being built in Birkenhead by Telescope Technologies Ltd. With its 2m (6.6ft) diameter main mirror, which makes it the largest robotic telescope dedicated to research ever built, the LT started science operations in January 2004. It is owned and operated as a “space probe on the ground” by Liverpool John Moores University (JMU), and supported by funding from JMU, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, the European Union, the Higher Education Funding Council and the generous benefaction of Mr Aldham Robarts.

Although only operational for just under a month, the LT has already observed a wide range of objects from comets and asteroids, through exploding stars (novae and supernovae) to the variations in light of the centres of active galaxies where it is thought that supermassive black holes may be lurking.

The RAS meeting will also be presented with a vision of the future in which a network of giant robotic telescopes like the LT would be sited around the globe. This robotic telescope network (“RoboNet”) would act as a single, fast-reacting telescope, able to observe objects anywhere on the sky at any time and to follow them 24 hours a day if necessary.

Taking advantage of developments in internet technology, the network will be automatically and intelligently controlled by software developed by the e-STAR project (a collaboration between Exeter University and JMU). e-STAR links the telescopes via “intelligent agents” directly to archives and databases, so that follow-up observations of objects that are seen to vary can automatically be undertaken without human intervention.

Plans are already being considered for a prototype RoboNet based around the LT and its (primarily educational) clones, the Faulkes Telescopes, in Hawaii and Australia. This would lead next to the establishment of a dedicated network in the southern hemisphere searching for planets around other stars. The REX (the Robotic Exo-planet discovery network) project, led by the University of St Andrews, holds out the best prospects for the detection of Earth-like planets around other stars prior to the launch of vastly more expensive space-based observatories in the next decade.

Original Source: RAS News Release

Image credit: Fermilab

Astronomers don’t know what Dark Matter is, but they can see the effect of its gravity on regular matter. One possibility is that it’s regular matter, but isn’t emitting enough light for us to see. Another idea is that Dark Matter is an exotic form of matter that’s much more massive than regular particles, but interact so weakly that they’re almost impossible to detect. Researchers with the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II have set up a series of detectors in an old iron mine in Minnesota that’s shielded from cosmic radiation and might sense these particles.

Using detectors chilled to near absolute zero, from a vantage point half a mile below ground, physicists of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search today (November 12) announced the launch of a quest that could lead to solving two mysteries that may turn out to be one and the same: the identity of the dark matter that pervades the universe, and the existence of supersymmetric particles predicted by particle physics theory. Scientists of CDMS II, an experiment managed by the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory hope to discover WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, the leading candidates for the constituents of dark matter-which may be identical to neutralinos, undiscovered particles predicted by the theory of supersymmetry.

“There’s this arrow from particle physics and this arrow from cosmology and they seem to be pointing to the same place,” said Case Western Reserve University’s Dan Akerib, deputy project manager of CDMS II. “Detection of a neutralino would be very big for cosmology and it would also be very big for particle physics.”

The CDMS II experiment, a collaboration of scientists from 12 institutions with support from DOE’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation, uses a detector located deep underground in the historic Soudan Iron Mine in northeastern Minnesota. Experimenters seek signals of WIMPs, particles much more massive than a proton but interacting so weakly with other particles that thousands would pass through a human body each second without leaving a trace.

Remarkably, in the kind of convergence that gets physicists’ attention, the characteristics of this cosmic missing matter particle now appear to match those of the supersymmetric neutralino.

“Either that is a cosmic coincidence, or the universe is telling us something,” said Fermilab’s Dan Bauer, CDMS project manager.

By watching how galaxies spin-how gravity affects their contingent stars-astronomers have known for 70 years that the matter we see cannot constitute all the matter in the universe. If it did, galaxies would fly apart. Recent calculations indicate that ordinary matter containing atoms makes up only 4 percent of the energy-matter content of the universe. “Dark energy” makes up 73 percent, and an unknown form of dark matter makes up the last 23 percent.

“It is often said that this is the ultimate Copernican Revolution,” said David Caldwell, a physicist at the University of California at Santa Barbara and chair of the CDMS Executive Committee. “Not only are we not at the center of the universe, but we are not even made of the same stuff as most of the universe.”

Measurements of the cosmic microwave background, residual radiation left over from the Big Bang, have recently placed severe constraints on the nature and amount of dark matter. The lightweight neutrino can account for only a few percent of the missing mass. If neutrinos constituted the main component of dark matter, they would act on the cosmic microwave background of the universe in ways that the recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe should have observed-but did not.

Meanwhile, particle physicists have kept a lookout for particles that will extend the Standard Model, the theory of fundamental particles and forces. Supersymmetry, a theory that takes a big step toward the unification of all of the forces of nature, predicts that every matter particle has a massive supersymmetric counterpart. No one has yet seen one of these “superpartners.” Theory specifies the neutralino as the lightest neutral superpartner, and the most stable, a necessary attribute for dark matter. The neutralino’s predicted abundance and rate of interaction also make it a likely dark matter candidate, and Caldwell noted the impact that CDMS II could have.

“Discovery,” he said, “would be a great breakthrough, one of the most important of the century.”

Only occasionally would a WIMP hit the nucleus of a terrestrial atom, and the constant background “noise” from more mundane particle events-such as the common cosmic rays constantly showering the earth-would normally drown out these rare interactions. Placing the CDMS II detector beneath 740 meters of earth screens out most particle noise from cosmic rays. Chilling the detector to 50 thousandths of a degree above absolute zero reduces background thermal energy to allow detection of individual particle collisions. Fermilab’s Bauer estimates that with sufficiently low backgrounds, CDMS needs only a few interactions to make a strong claim for detection of WIMPs.

“The powerful technology we deploy allows an unambiguous identification of events in the crystals caused by any new form of matter,” said CDMS cospokesperson Bernard Sadoulet of the University of California at Berkeley.

Cospokesperson Blas Cabrera of Stanford University concurred.

“We believe we have the best apparatus in the world in terms of being able to identify WIMPs,” Cabrera said.

“This endeavor is a good example of cooperation between the DOE’s Office of High Energy Physics and the National Science Foundation in helping scientists address the origin of the dark matter in the universe,” said Raymond Orbach, Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

“CDMS II is the kind of innovative and pathbreaking research NSF is proud to support,” said Michael Turner, Assistant Director for Math and Physical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. “If it detects a signal it may tell us what the dark matter is and give us an important clue as to how gravity fits together with the other forces. This type of experiment shows how the universe can be used as a laboratory for getting at the some of the most basic questions we can ask as well as how DOE and NSF are working together.”

While CDMS II watches for WIMPs, scientists at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator will try to create neutralinos by smashing protons and antiprotons together.

“CDMS can tell us the mass and interaction rate of the WIMP,” said collaborator Roger Dixon of Fermilab. “But it will take an accelerator to tell us whether it’s a neutralino.”

CDMS II collaborators include Brown University, Case Western Reserve University, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Accelerator Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Princeton University, Santa Clara University, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Colorado at Denver, University of Minnesota.

Funding for the CDMS II experiment comes from the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Astronomy and Physics Division of the National Science Foundation.

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy and operated by Universities Research Association, Inc.

Original Source: Fermilab News Release

Image credit: ESO

Workers in Chile broke ground today in the construction of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) – a giant radio telescope made up of 64 high-precision radio antennas. ALMA is scheduled to be completed in 2012, but radio astronomers will be able to start using it in 2007, when some of the antennas have been completed. Using interferometry, the radio signals from the individual 12-metre dishes will be combined to act like a single radio telescope 14 kilometres across. Needless to say, it will help astronomers push much deeper into the cosmos when viewing the radio spectrum.

Scientists and dignitaries from Europe, North America and Chile are breaking ground today (Thursday, November 6, 2003) on what will be the world’s largest, most sensitive radio telescope operating at millimeter wavelengths.

ALMA – the “Atacama Large Millimeter Array” – will be a single instrument composed of 64 high-precision antennas located in the II Region of Chile, in the District of San Pedro de Atacama, at the Chajnantor altiplano, 5,000 metres above sea level. ALMA’s primary function will be to observe and image with unprecedented clarity the enigmatic cold regions of the Universe, which are optically dark, yet shine brightly in the millimetre portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) is an international astronomy facility. ALMA is an equal partnership between Europe and North America, in cooperation with the Republic of Chile, and is funded in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), and in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Spain. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), and on behalf of Europe by ESO.

“ALMA will be a giant leap forward for our studies of this relatively little explored spectral window towards the Universe”, said Dr. Catherine Cesarsky, Director General of ESO. “With ESO leading the European part of this ambitious and forward-looking project, the impact of ALMA will be felt in wide circles on our continent. Together with our partners in North America and Chile, we are all looking forward to the truly outstanding opportunities that will be offered by ALMA, also to young scientists and engineers”.

“The U.S. National Science Foundation joins today with our North American partner, Canada, and with the European Southern Observatory, Spain, and Chile to prepare for a spectacular new instrument,” stated Dr. Rita Colwell, director of the U.S. National Science Foundation. “ALMA will expand our vision of the Universe with “eyes” that pierce the shrouded mantles of space through which light cannot penetrate.”

On the occasion of this groundbreaking, the ALMA logo was unveiled.

Science with ALMA
ALMA will capture millimetre and sub-millimetre radiation from space and produce images and spectra of celestial objects as they appear at these wavelengths. This particular portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is less energetic than visible and infrared light, yet more energetic than most radio waves, holds the key to understanding a great variety of fundamental processes, e.g., planet and star formation and the formation and evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the early Universe. The possibility to detect emission from organic and other molecules in space is of particularly high interest.

The millimetre and sub-millimetre radiation that ALMA will study is able to penetrate the vast clouds of dust and gas that populate interstellar (and intergalactic) space, revealing previously hidden details about astronomical objects. This radiation, however, is blocked by atmospheric moisture (water molecules) in the Earth’s atmosphere. To conduct research with ALMA in this critical portion of the spectrum, astronomers thus need an exceptional observation site that is very dry, and at a very high altitude where the atmosphere above is thinner. Extensive tests showed that the sky above the high-altitude Chajnantor plain in the Atacama Desert has the unsurpassed clarity and stability needed to perform efficient observations with ALMA.

ALMA operation
ALMA will be the highest-altitude, full-time ground-based observatory in the world, at some 250 metres higher than the peak of Mont Blanc, Europe’s tallest mountain.

Work at this altitude is difficult. To help ensure the safety of the scientists and engineers at ALMA, operations will be conducted from the Operations Support Facility (ALMA OSF), a compound located at a more comfortable altitude of 2,900 metres, between the cities of Toconao and San Pedro de Atacama.

Phase 1 of the ALMA Project, which included the design and development, was completed in 2002. The beginning of Phase 2 happened on February 25, 2003, when the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) signed a historic agreement to construct and operate ALMA, cf. ESO PR 04/03.

Construction will continue until 2012; however, initial scientific observations are planned already from 2007, with a partial array of the first antennas. ALMA’s operation will progressively increase until 2012 with the installation of the remaining antennas. The entire project will cost approximately 600 million Euros.

Earlier this year, the ALMA Board selected Professor Massimo Tarenghi, formerly manager of ESO’s VLT Project, to become ALMA Director. He is confident that he and his team will succeed: “We may have a lot of hard work in front of us”, he said, “but all of us in the team are excited about this unique project. We are ready to work for the international astronomical community and to provide them in due time with an outstanding instrument allowing trailblazing research projects in many different fields of modern astrophysics”.

How ALMA will work
ALMA will be composed of 64 high-precision antennas, each 12 metres in diameter. The ALMA antennas can be repositioned, allowing the telescope to function much like the zoom lens on a camera. At its largest, ALMA will be 14 kilometers across. This will allow the telescope to observe fine-scale details of astronomical objects. At its smallest configuration, approximately 150 meters across, ALMA will be able to study the large-scale structures of these same objects.

ALMA will function as an interferometer (according to the same basic principle as the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) at Paranal). This means that it will combine the signals from all its antennas (one pair of antennas at a time) to simulate a telescope the size of the distance between the antennas.

With 64 antennas, ALMA will generate 2016 individual antenna pairs (“baselines”) during the observations. To handle this enormous amount of data, ALMA will rely on a very powerful, specialized computer (a “correlator”), which will perform 16,000 million million (1.6 x 1016) operations per second.

Currently, two prototype ALMA antennas are undergoing rigorous testing at the NRAO’s Very Large Array site, near Socorro, New Mexico, USA.

International collaboration
For this ambitious project, ALMA has become a joint effort among many nations and scientific institutions. In Europe, ESO leads on behalf of its ten member countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) and Spain. Japan may join in 2004, bringing enhancements to the project. Given the participation of North America, this will be the first truly global project of ground-based astronomy, an essential development in view of the increasing technological sophistication and the high costs of front-line astronomy installations.

The first submillimeter telescope in the southern hemisphere was the 15-m Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) which was installed at the ESO La Silla Observatory in 1987. It has since been used extensively by astronomers, mostly from ESO’s member states. SEST has now been decommissioned and a new submillimetre telescope, APEX, is about to commence operations at Chajnantor. APEX, which is a joint project between ESO, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn (Germany), and the Onsala Space Observatory (Sweden), is an antenna comparable to the ALMA antennas.

Original Source: ESO News Release