Telescope

Amateur astronomers wanting to observe celestial bodies soon won’t be limited to just their own personal telescopes, or visits to the local public observatory. Starting next year, the first in a worldwide network of robotic telescopes will be going online, which users from any location on the planet will be able to operate for free via the internet. Known as Gloria (GLObal Robotic telescopes Intelligent Array for e-Science), the three-year European project will ultimately include 17 telescopes on four continents, run by 13 partner groups from Russia, Chile, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland and Spain. Not only will users be able to control the telescopes from their computers, but they will also have access to the astronomical databases of Gloria and other organizations.  Read More

In a moment long-awaited by thousands of astronomers from around the globe, a cluster of precision radio telescopes located on the barren Chajnantor Plateau of northern Chile has finally gone operational. Although only partially complete, ALMA, or the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is already considered the most advanced telescope of its type. Certainly, it's the highest, with a literally breath-taking base elevation of 16,500 feet (5000m).  Read More

In news that conjures up visions of Luke Skywalker looking wistfully at the twin sunset of Tatooine accompanied by a stirring John Williams score, NASA's Kepler mission has detected the first planet orbiting two stars. The circumbinary planet, dubbed Kepler-16b, is some 200 light-years from Earth and, though gaseous and not thought to harbor life, its discovery broadens the opportunities for life in our galaxy according to Kepler principal investigator William Boruckias, because most of the Milky Way's stars are part of binary systems.  Read More

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced its exoplanet-hunting HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) has discovered 50 new exoplanets, making it the largest amount of exoplanets that has been announced at the one time. Bringing the number of planets discovered outside our solar system to 645, the 50-planet haul includes 16 super-Earths (planets with a mass between one and ten times that of Earth), including one that orbits at the edge of the habitable zone of its star.  Read More

Human beings may have only discovered how to create the one-atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms known as graphene in 2004 but it appears the universe could have been churning out the stuff since much earlier than that. While not conclusive proof its existence in space, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has identified the signature of graphene in two small galaxies outside our own. If confirmed, it would be the first-ever cosmic detection of the material and could hold clues to how our carbon-based life forms such as ourselves developed.  Read More

To look at the Russian RadioAstron spacecraft, which launched from Kazakhstan this Monday, it doesn’t seem particularly record-breaking. Its 10-meter (33-foot) antenna is certainly no match for those on earthbound radio telescopes, which can be up to 300 meters (984 feet) across. Once in orbit, however, its signal will join forces with those from ground-based telescopes to form one giant virtual telescope. Using a process known as interferometry, they will form the equivalent of a single radio telescope dish that at over 350,000 kilometers (217,480 miles) across is almost 30 times wider than the Earth. Although it’s not actually one physical object, it is nonetheless being heralded as the largest telescope ever created.  Read More

Since its completion in 1963, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with a diameter of 305 m (1,000 ft) and a collecting area of 73,000 square meters (790,000 sq ft), has been the largest single-aperture radio telescope ever constructed. But Arecibo is set to lose its title with construction now underway in Guizhou Province in southern China of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). Upon its expected completion in 2016, FAST will have a surface area of over 195,000 square meters (2.1 million sq ft) and will be able to see more than three times further into space and survey the skies ten times faster than Arecibo.  Read More

Recent technological advances are opening up more of the night sky to astronomers, allowing them to follow events using multiple telescopes as the Earth rotates. Researchers hope that a higher frequency of rare extreme astrophysical events such as colliding neutron stars will be detected using the next-generation radio telescopes sited in Europe, South Africa and Western Australia. With the so-called 4 Pi Sky project, events can be tracked across the sky using this series of terrestrial telescopes. These events can then be further analyzed using orbiting X-ray telescopes and ground based optical telescopes. One of the grandest aims of the project is to provide answers to some of the largest remaining question in physics, such as the nature of gravity.  Read More

NASA has announced that its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne observatory has just completed its maiden science flight. The flight was undertaken to demonstrate the aircraft's potential to make discoveries about the infrared universe. It's anticipated that the aircraft will allow researchers to extend investigations of discoveries already made by existing space telescopes, as well as make important breakthroughs of its own.  Read More