sky survey Archives

November 28, 2023November 28, 2023 by Mark Thompson

Telescopes Didn’t Always Play Nicely with Each Other. That’s About to Change

This composite image of the GOODS-South field — the result of an extremely deep survey using two of the four giant 8.2-metre telescopes composing ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and a unique custom-built filter — shows some of the faintest galaxies ever seen. — Composite image of the GOODS-South field, result of a deep survey using two 8.2-metre telescopes (Credit : ESO/M Hayes)

Those readers who have dabbled with astronomical imaging will be familiar with the technique of taking multiple images and then stacking them together to improve the strength of the signal, yielding better images. Taking this technique further many research projects require date of the same object spanning longer time frames than a nights observing. This data is usually captured from different locations and under different conditions. The problem has been matching the observations across all these survey runs. Researchers have shared a new approach to calculate if separate images of the same object will yield additional signals or just generate useless noise.

March 27, 2022March 27, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

NASA's Upcoming SPHEREx Mission Will map the Entire Universe in Infrared Every 6 Months

Illustration of the SPHEREx satellite. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The universe is cold and dark. And yet, within the dark, there is a faint glow of warmth. Across the sky, there are objects that emit infrared light, similar to the light that warms your hands near a campfire. By observing this light, astronomers can see the cosmos in a way that looks very different from that seen by our eyes.

March 1, 2022March 1, 2022 by Scott Alan Johnston

Comprehensive Sky Survey Finds Over a Million New Objects

In perfect viewing conditions, with good eyesight and clear, dark skies, the average person can see between 2,500 and 5,000 stars in the night sky. Add a telescope to the mix, and the number of visible objects in the sky explodes exponentially. For example, in 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope famously pointed its mirrors at a tiny piece of empty space – about 1/12^th the size of the Moon – and revealed three thousand new objects crammed into that little area, most of them distant galaxies, offering a glimpse of the past stretching back to the early Universe. The astounding implication of the Hubble Deep Field image was that there are still billions of objects out there yet unseen by human eyes (or telescopes). Since then, the process of surveying deep space has been a massive ongoing undertaking, using all the tools available to us, from visible light telescopes like Hubble to infrared and radio telescopes. In a new data dump last week, a major radio sky survey, LOFAR, has revealed over a million new, never before seen objects in the night sky.