Telescope // Current

Asteroid Juno Grabs the Spotlight

Toward the end of September, the sun will turn a spotlight on the asteroid Juno,... more

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The Wonderful Scenes of the Universe

Here are some of the wonderful scenes of the universe.

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Extraordinary Pictures of the February 21, 2008 Lunar Eclipse

The most recent lunar eclipse was seen from all over the world. Here are pictures... more

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Thirty-Meter Telescope Headed for Mauna Kea

The Thirty Meter Telescope, which is vying to be the inaugural member of an emerging class of giant eyes in the sky, is headed for the Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

That means the other contending site, Cerro Armazones in Chile, is off the drawing board.
Richard Ellis, a TMT board member, said the choice was a tough one, but Mauna Kea had scientific advantages.

"Mauna Kea is a higher site. It is actually drier, and the average temperature fluctuates less from day to day and during the day to night cycle than the Chilean site," he said, during a press conference this afternoon to announce the decision. "Much of the astronomy will be at infrared wavelengths, where the dryness is an advantage."

He added that the Hawaii boasts slightly better atmospheric qualities, including lower turbulence over the site.

When completed in 2018, the TMT will enable astronomers to detect and study light from the earliest stars and galaxies, analyze the formation of planets around nearby stars, and test many of the fundamental laws of physics. Based on the scientific model of the twin Keck telescopes, the core technology of TMT will be a 30-meter primary mirror composed of 492 segments.

The TMT project is an international partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and ACURA, an organization of Canadian universities. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) joined TMT as a Collaborating Institution in 2008.

The TMT project has completed its $77 million design development phase with primary financial support of $50 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and $22 million from Canada. The project has now entered the early construction phase, with an additional $200 million pledge from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Caltech and the University of California each have agreed to raise matching funds of $50 million to bring the construction total to $300 million, and the Canadian partners propose to supply the enclosure, the telescope structure, and the first light adaptive optics.

The TMT faces competition from the Giant Magellan Telescope to usher in the age of the giants.The Thirty Meter Telescope, which is vying to be the inaugural member of an emerging... more

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Astronauts complete tricky Hubble surgery

In an orbital first, astronauts opened up and installed new electronics on one of the... more

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Shuttle snapped up against sun

NASA'S space shuttle Atlantis has been caught in a stunning snap silhouetted against... more

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Special Tools Required For Last Call To Hubble

The right tools can make any job easier, and that will be especially true this week... more

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Hubble Photographs Giant Eye in Space

The Hubble Space Telescope's legendary Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 has produced... more

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Hubble photographs flying-saucer galaxy

A new Hubble image highlights striking swirling dust lanes and glittering globular... more

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Telescope sees smallest exoplanet

The smallest planet outside our solar system has been discovered on a French... more

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Soggy Universe: Astronomers Find Most Distant Water Yet

Astronomers report they have found water in a galaxy 11 billion light-years from... more

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IceCube telescope under construction

The telescope -- called IceCube -- will occupy a cubic kilometer of Antarctica when it... more

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Water vapor confirmed on alien planet

The unequivocal signature of water vapor has been found on a planet beyond our solar... more

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Hubble Finds Carbon Dioxide on Extrasolar Planet

The Hubble Space Telescope has detected carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet... more

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SETI may have found alien life!

“We’ll find E.T. within two dozen years.” SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial... more

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NASA Delays Atlantis Mission to Hubble Telescope

NASA is delaying next month's shuttle launch to the Hubble Space Telescope because of... more

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'Super-scope' will have 10x power of Hubble

Sixteen thousand five hundred feet up into the Andes, deep inside the Atacama Desert, lies this barren, windswept plateau of maroon rock and sand. One of the driest places on Earth, the table-top-flat Chajnantor is nothing short of a wasteland, offering few humans reason to tread here. Until now.

Giant excavators and construction equipment operate in the distance as I labor to breathe in the thin air while walking toward a gleaming metal and glass building. I've come to get an in-depth progress report on the construction of what will be the planet's most advanced land-based telescope: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

Consisting of 66 radio antennas spread across 10 miles and linked to the world's most extensive superconducting electronic receiving system, ALMA will peer into regions of space never seen before. The Chajnantor Plain was chosen following a worldwide search due to its cloudless skies and razor-thin atmosphere, which will allow the antennas' super-sensitive receivers to detect electromagnetic wavelengths of less than a hair's width, down to 0.3 millimeters. By tapping the millimeter/submillimeter spectrum, ALMA will soon generate images of the cold universe, dim areas of gas and dust where new stars form. For the first time, astronomers should be able to see 14 billion years into the past, to the formation of the earliest galaxies.

Researchers will move the antennas to shrink or expand the array, creating a giant zoom lens with resolutions 10 times better than that of the Hubble Space Telescope. Funded by a consortium of astronomical organizations from North America, Europe and Japan, the $1.3 billion project is scheduled for completion in 2012. But first it must be built.

"Nothing like this has ever been done before," says Adrian Russell, ALMA project manager for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, one of the American sponsors. "We are delivering a lot of very complex, sensitive and expensive hardware to a remote and challenging site where it all must be assembled."

My visit begins at the Operations Support Facilities site at 10,000 ft., where I arrive following a 9-mile drive up a dusty road after turning off Chilean Route 23 and passing through a guard station. With its modern metal and glass buildings, the OSF site resembles a high-tech campus in Silicon Valley. Known as "the low site," this is the base camp for ALMA with housing for 500, a power station, cantina, cinema, medical clinic, stop signs and streetlights. Technicians will operate the antennas from here. This is also where engineers are assembling the antennas after trucking in the parts from the port of Antofagasta 180 miles away.
Sixteen thousand five hundred feet up into the Andes, deep inside the Atacama Desert,... more