Category Archives: Astronomy

Do not let the image and the name of the depicted cosmic object fool you! What you see in this picture is not a wildfire, but the Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured in radio waves.The Flame Nebula is the large feature on the left half of the central, yellow rectangle. The smaller feature on the right is the reflection nebula NGC 2023. To the top right of NGC 2023, the iconic Horsehead Nebula seems to emerge heroically from the flames. The three objects are part of the Orion cloud, a giant gas structure located between 1300 and 1600 light-years away.The different colors indicate the velocity of the gas. The Flame Nebula and its surroundings are moving away from us, with the red clouds in the background receding faster than the yellow ones in the foreground.The image in the rectangle is based on observations conducted with the SuperCam instrument on the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) on Chiles Chajnantor Plateau. The background image was taken in infrared light with ESOs Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.Credit: ESO/Th. Stanke & ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Orion offers you a spectacular firework display to celebrate the holiday season and the new year in this new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). But no need to worry, this iconic constellation is neither exploding nor burning. The fire you see in this holiday postcard is Orions Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured in radio waves an image that undoubtedly does justice to the nebulas name! It was taken with the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), located on the cold Chajnantor Plateau in Chiles Atacama Desert.

The newly processed image of the Flame Nebula, in which smaller nebulae like the Horsehead Nebula also make an appearance, is based on observations conducted by former ESO astronomer Thomas Stanke and his team a few years ago. Excited to try out the then recently installed SuperCam instrument at APEX, they pointed it towards the constellation Orion. As astronomers like to say, whenever there is a new telescope or instrument around, observe Orion: there will always be something new and interesting to discover! says Stanke. A few years and many observations later, Stanke and his team have now had their results accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

This image shows the Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured in radio waves. The image is based on observations conducted with the SuperCam instrument on the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) on Chiles Chajnantor Plateau.The Flame Nebula is the large feature on the left. The smaller feature on the right is the reflection nebula NGC 2023. To the top right of NGC 2023, the iconic Horsehead Nebula seems to emerge heroically from the flames. The three objects are part of the Orion cloud, a giant gas structure located between 1300 and 1600 light-years away.The different colors indicate the velocity of the gas. The Flame Nebula and its surroundings are moving away from us, with the red clouds in the background receding faster than the yellow ones in the foreground.Credit: ESO/Th. Stanke

One of the most famous regions in the sky, Orion is home to the giant molecular clouds closest to the Sun vast cosmic objects made up mainly of hydrogen, where new stars and planets form. These clouds are located between 1300 and 1600 light-years away and feature the most active stellar nursery in the Solar Systems neighborhood, as well as the Flame Nebula depicted in this image. This emission nebula harbors a cluster of young stars at its center that emit high-energy radiation, making the surrounding gases shine.

With such an exciting target, the team was unlikely to be disappointed. In addition to the Flame Nebula and its surroundings, Stanke and his collaborators were able to admire a wide range of other spectacular objects. Some examples include the reflection nebulae Messier 78 and NGC 2071 clouds of interstellar gas and dust believed to reflect the light of nearby stars. The team even discovered one new nebula, a small object, remarkable in its almost perfectly circular appearance, which they named the Cow Nebula.

The Flame Nebula, captured in radio waves in this image, is the large feature on the left half of the central, yellow rectangle. The smaller feature on the right is the reflection nebula NGC 2023. To the top right of NGC 2023, the iconic Horsehead Nebula seems to emerge heroically from the flames. The three objects are part of the Orions cloud, a giant gas structure located between 1300 and 1600 light-years away.The different colors indicate the velocity of the gas. The Flame Nebula and its surroundings are moving away from us, with the red clouds in the background receding faster than the yellow ones in the foreground.The image in the rectangle is based on observations conducted with the SuperCam instrument on the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) on Chiles Chajnantor Plateau. The background image was created from photographs in optical light forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.Credit: ESO/Th. Stanke & ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

The observations were conducted as part of the APEX Large CO Heterodyne Orion Legacy Survey (ALCOHOLS), which looked at the radio waves emitted by carbon monoxide (CO) in the Orion clouds. Using this molecule to probe wide areas of the sky is the primary goal of SuperCam, as it allows astronomers to map large gas clouds that give birth to new stars. Unlike what the fire of this image might suggest, these clouds are actually cold, with temperatures typically just a few tens of degrees above absolute zero.

Given the many secrets it can tell, this region of the sky has been scanned many times in the past at different wavelengths, each wavelength range unveiling different, unique features of Orions molecular clouds. One example is the infrared observations performed with ESOs Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile that make up the peaceful background of this image of the Flame Nebula and its surroundings. Unlike visible light, infrared waves pass through the thick clouds of interstellar dust, allowing astronomers to spot stars and other objects which would otherwise remain hidden.

So, this holiday season, bring in the new year with this spectacular multiwavelength firework show put on by the Orions Flame Nebula, presented by ESO!

Reference: The APEX Large CO Heterodyne Orion Legacy Survey (ALCOHOLS). I. Survey overview by Thomas Stanke, H. G. Arce, J. Bally, P. Bergman, J. Carpenter, C. J. Davis, W. Dent, J. Di Francesco, J. Eislffel, D. Froebrich, A. Ginsburg, M. Heyer, D. Johnstone, D. Mardones, M. J. McCaughrean, S. T. Megeath, F. Nakamura, M. D. Smith, A. Stutz, K. Tatematsu, C. Walker, J. P. Williams, H. Zinnecker, B. J. Swift, C. Kulesa, B. Peters, B. Duffy, J. Kloosterman, U. A. Yildiz, J. L. Pineda, C. De Breuck and Th. Klein, Accepted, Astronomy & Astrophysics.arXiv:2201.00463The observations mentioned in this press release are presented in a paper accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The team is composed of Th. Stanke (European Southern Observatory, Garching bei Mnchen, Germany [ESO]), H. G. Arce (Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA), J. Bally (CASA, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA), P. Bergman (Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden), J. Carpenter (Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago, Chile [ALMA]), C. J. Davis (National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA, USA), W. Dent (ALMA), J. Di Francesco (NRC Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics, Victoria, BC, Canada [HAA] and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria, BC, Canada [UVic]), J. Eislffel (Thuringer Landessternwarte, Tautenburg, Germany), D. Froebrich (School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK), A. Ginsburg (Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA), M. Heyer (Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA), D. Johnstone (HAA and UVic), D. Mardones (Departamento de Astronoma, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile), M. J. McCaughrean (European Space Agency, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands), S. T. Megeath (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Toledo, OH, USA), F. Nakamura (National Astronomical Observatory, Tokyo, Japan), M. D. Smith (Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK), A. Stutz (Departmento de Astronoma, Facultad de Ciencias Fsicas y Matemticas, Universidad de Concepcin, Chile), K. Tatematsu (Nobeyama Radio Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Nagano, Japan), C. Walker (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, US [SO]), J. P. Williams (Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI, USA), H. Zinnecker (Universidad Autonoma de Chile, Santiago, Chile), B. J. Swift (SO), C. Kulesa (SO), B. Peters (SO), B. Duffy (SO), J. Kloosterman (University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, IN, USA), U. A. Yildiz (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA [JPL]), J. L. Pineda (JPL), C. De Breuck (ESO), and Th. Klein (European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile).

APEX is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) and ESO. Operation of APEX at Chajnantor is entrusted to ESO.

SuperCAM is a project by the Steward Observatory Radio Astronomy Laboratory at the University of Arizona, US.

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Orion's Fireplace: Incredible New Image of the Flame Nebula - SciTechDaily

Looking back on 2021, there were many great space stories in the news, including two lunar eclipses back in May and November.

By coincidence, two more total lunar eclipses will occur in May and November of 2022.

We were also entertained by three great meteor showers in January, August, and December, but the bright moon ran major interference.

Speaking of bright things in the sky, the Northern Lights were prominent last month, particularly in Western Canada, painting the sky green.

The never-ending list of exoplanets continues to grow, with a total of 4,884 confirmed worlds and another 8,288 candidates. This search continues via ground- and space-based telescopes. So, next time you look up at those twinkling points of light, remember that you are looking at mini solar systems, with at least one planet orbiting its parent star.

After all, our sun is but one of 300 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

It was this time last year that the Japanese Hayabusa mission successfully returned soil samples from the asteroid 25143 Itokawa. The sample shows thatwaterandorganic matterthat originate from the asteroid itself have evolved chemically through time.

It has long been the thought by astronomers and scientists that the building blocks of organic compounds needed to create life began in the solar system and were delivered to the young Earth via meteorites. Missions such as this have shed new light on this theory. Meteorites and comets contain small amounts of water, and impacts over millions of years have most likely delivered water to the Earth.

Comparable to the list of exoplanets, 70 more rogue planets have been detected floating through space. These are outcasts from their solar systems by some event such as the star exploding, thus launching a planet or planets on a path to nowhere. Or some of them could have been overpowered by the gravity of larger planets and slingshot out of their systems, far away from the light and (possible) warmth of their suns.

Until now, the sun has been studied by Earth-bound telescopes and orbiting satellites. The amount of information that has been learned is outstanding, but the missing key has always been a physical examination. Never before has a spacecraft touched the sununtil the Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018.

Over the years, the craft made multiple manoeuvres as it got closer to the sun. In December of this year, the probe touched the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, which is only seen from Earth during a total solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the sun's blinding light.

Over the next few years, it will skim closer to our star, and by the year 2025 it will be racing along at an unheard-of speed of 690,000 kilometres per hour, or 192 kilometres per second. Its 11.4-centimetre-thick heat shield allows it to operate at about 29C and not fry the electronics.

The newest addition to the Martian fleet came with the deployment of the SUV-sized rover Perseverance and theIngenuityhelicopter anchored under it. The two blades of the small helicopter spin in opposite directions to help give lift in the thin Martian atmosphere. To date, it has logged 30 minutes in a series of short flights. This is the first time such a vehicle has been used on the Red Planet.

Private companies, not just NASA, have proved that they have the right stuff to launch into space. Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin allowed 90-year-old William Shatner and retired NFL player Michael Strahan to touch space by rocketing past the so-called Karman line, 100 kiolometres above the Earth's surface.

But Elon Musk has taken space travel one step further by transporting astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station via the SpaceX Dragoncargo ship. It is the same Dragon capsule that almost had to be used as an emergency escape vehicle when the International Space Station was subjected to a dangerous debris field from a purposely blown-up satellite. The danger has all but passed, but there were some anxious moments.

Space is dangerous, with hazardous solar radiation and cosmic rays. As well, more than 23,000 pieces of orbital debris larger than a softball are being tracked, and there are a half-million pieces the size of a marble or larger, with approximately 100 million pieces of debris being about one millimetre and a bit larger. All are moving at 28,000 kilo,metres per hour, or almost eight kilometres per second.

In September of 2022, the DART(Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission will arrive at the 800-metre-wide asteroid 65803 Didymos to deflect a small (160 metres wide) moonlet, Dimorphos. This is a test to see if a potentially dangerous asteroid coming toward Earth can be slightly deflected, thus changing its course and missing our planet. This particular asteroid isin no way on a collision course with our home planet.

Finally, the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, successor to the Hubble Space Telescope) was launched on Christmas Day. It has a much larger mirror system than does the venerable Hubble and will study infant galaxies in the near-infrared, thus allowing us to see through the gas and dust of the earliest galaxies.

The telescope's sun shield is the size of a tennis court and will both shade the telescope from the heat of the sun and block the light of the Earth and moon. It will operate at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth, where the temperature of space is -223C. The JWST will be able to look back to the beginning of the universe, some 13.8 billion years ago.

One of its many projects will be to see if black holes helped create the galaxies or if they came afterwards. It will also look for signs of life in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.

Clear skies.

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The Backyard Astronomer: The astronomy year in review - The Georgia Straight

Looking back to 2021, there were many great space stories in the news including two lunar eclipses back in May and November. By coincidence, two more total lunar eclipses will occur in May and November 2022. We were also entertained by three great meteor showers in January, August and December but the moon ran major interference. The Northern Lights were prominent last month particularly in western Canada painting the sky green.

The never-ending list of exoplanets continues to grow with a total of 4,884 confirmed worlds and another 8,288 candidates. This search continues via ground and space-based telescopes. So, next time you look up at those twinkling points of light, you are looking at mini solar systems of at least one planet orbiting its parent star. After all the sun is but one of 300 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

It was this time last year that the Japanese Hayabusa mission successfully return soil samples from the asteroid Itokawa. The sample shows thatwaterandorganic matterthat originate from the asteroid itself have evolved chemically through time. It has long been the thought of astronomers and scientists that building blocks of organic compounds needed to create life began in the solar system and was delivered to the young earth via meteorites. Missions such as this have shed new light on this theory. Meteorites and comets contain small amounts of water. Impacts over millions of years have most likely delivered water to the earth.

Comparable to the list of exoplanets, 70 more rogue planets have been detected floating through space. These are outcasts from their solar system by some event such as the star exploding thus launching it on a path to nowhere. Or some could have been overpowered by larger planets in their solar system and slingshot out of their system, from the light and (possible) warmth of their sun.

Until now, the sun has been studied by earth-bound telescopes and orbiting satellites. The amount of information learned is outstanding but the missing key was a physical examination. Never before has a spacecraft touched the sun until the Solar Parker Probe launched in 2018. Over the years the craft made multiple manoeuvres as it gets closer to the sun. In December of this year, the probe has touched the upper atmosphere of the suns corona which is only seen from Earth during a total solar eclipse when the moon blocks the blinding light. Over the next few years it will skim closer to our star and by the year 2025 is will be racing at an unheard of speed of 690,000 kilometres per hour or 192 kilometres per second. Its 11.4-centimetre thick heat shield alloys it to operate at about 29 degrees Celsius and not fry the electronics.

The newest addition to the Martian fleet came with the deployment of the SUV-sized rover Perseverance and Ingenuity helicopter anchored under it. The two blades of the small helicopter spin in opposite directions to help give lift in the thin Martian atmosphere. To date, it has logged 30 minutes in a series of short flights. This is the first time such a vehicle has been used on the red planet.

Private companies have proved they have the right stuff to launch into space, not just NASA. Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin allowed 90-year-old William Shatner and retired NFL Michael Strahan to touch space by past the 100 Karman Line. But Elon Musk has taken space travel one step further by transporting astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station via the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship. It is the same Dragon capsule that was almost used as an emergency escape vehicle. The International Space Station was subjected to a dangerous debris field of a purposely blown-up satellite. The danger has all but passed but there were some anxious moments.

Space is dangerous. Along with solar radiation from the sun and cosmic rays from the cosmos, more than 23,000 pieces of orbital debris larger than a softball are being tracked. Half a million pieces are the size of a marble or larger with approximately 100 million pieces of debris-about one millimetre and a bit larger. All moving at 28,000 km/hr or almost 8 km/sec.

In September of 2022, the DART mission will arrive at the 800-metre wide asteroid Didymos to deflect a small 160-metre wide moonlet Dimorphos. This is a test to see if a potential asteroid coming towards earth can be slightly deflected thus changing course and missing our planet. This particular asteroid is only a test subject and is no way on a collision course with our home planet.

The long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (successor to the Hubble Space Telescope) was launched on Christmas Day. It has a much larger mirror system and will study infant galaxies in the near-infrared thus allowing us to see through the gas and dust of the earliest galaxies. The sun shield measures the size of a tennis court and will shade the telescope from the heat of the sun and block the light of the earth and moon. It will operate at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres from the earth where the temperature of space is -223 degrees Celsius. The JWST will be capable to look back to the beginning of the universe, some 13.8 billion years ago. One of its many projects will be to see if black holes helped create the galaxies or if they came afterwards. It will also look for signs of like in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.

Known as The Backyard Astronomer, Gary Boyle is an astronomy educator, guest speaker and monthly columnist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. He has been interviewed on more than 50 Canadian radio stations and local Ottawa TV. In recognition of his public outreach in astronomy, the International Astronomical Union has honoured him with the naming of Asteroid (22406) Garyboyle. Follow him on Twitter: @astroeducator or his website: http://www.wondersofastronomy.com

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2021 Astronomy Year In Review Wawa-news.com - Wawa-news.com

A team of Spanish researchers recently published a file study In the journal Nature they claimed to have recorded in detail a barely noticeable eruption of a magnetic star 3.5 milliseconds It released the same amount of energy as the sun over 100,000 years.

Among neutron stars (objects that can contain half a million times the mass of Earth and have a diameter of only 20 kilometers) stand out a small group with the most intense magnetic fields known: magnetism.

So far, only 30 of these strange cosmic objects have been discovered, which are characterized by violent volcanic eruptions about which very little is known due to their unexpected nature and short duration.

However, astronomers from the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA) were able to measure various oscillations (or pulsations) that occurred during the moments of maximum energy for the magnetar. These oscillations are a critical component in understanding the giant bursts of energy from so-called magnetism.

Even in idle state, magnetic stars can be 100,000 times brighter than our sun to explain Alberto Castro Tirado, IAA researcher and lead author of the study. In the case of the flash we studied, GRB200415, which occurred on April 15, 2020 and lasted only about a tenth of a second, the energy released is equivalent to the energy radiated by our Sun. 100,000 yearshe added.

Observations of the phenomenon, detected by the ASIM instrument aboard the International Space Station, made it possible to estimate that the magnitude of the glow was similar to or greater than the size of the neutron star itself.

It is not known for certain what causes these extreme cosmic events, but researchers believe that they may be due to instability in the magnetosphere of magnetic trains or earthquakesIt is produced in its bark.

This volcanic eruption has provided a critical component for understanding how magnetic stresses are produced in and around a neutron star, Castro Tirado noted, concluding that continuous observation of magnetic stars in nearby galaxies will help understand this phenomenon and also pave the way to learn more about fast radio waves. , until today One of the most mysterious phenomena in astronomy.

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Astronomers discover a magnetar that releases in less than a second the same amount of energy as the Sun in 100,000 years - SmallCapNews.co.uk

Discovery image of the nebula. For this image, 120 individual exposures had to be combined to obtain a total exposure time of 20 hours. The images were taken over several months from Brazil. Credit: Maicon Germiniani

An international team of astronomers led by Stefan Kimeswenger from the Department of Astro and Particle Physics, together with scientific amateurs, has identified a new class of galactic nebulae. This provides an important building block in the understanding of stellar evolution and shows the importance of international collaboration between university research and community science.

For the first time, scientists, starting from a discovery by scientific amateurs, have succeeded in providing evidence for a fully developed shell of a common-envelope-system (CE) the phase of the common envelope of a binary star system. Toward the end of their lives, normal stars inflate into red giant stars. Since a very large fraction of stars are in binary stars, this affects the evolution at the end of their lives. In close binary systems, the inflating outer part of a star merges as a common envelope around both stars. However, inside this gas envelope the cores of the two stars are practically undisturbed and follow their evolution like independent single stars, explains astrophysicist Stefan Kimeswenger. The researchers have now published their results in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Many stellar systems being known to be remnants of such an evolution. Their chemical and physical properties serve as a fingerprint. Also stellar systems which are just about to develop a common envelope had already been discovered due to their specific and high brightness. However, the fully developed envelope of a CE and its ejection into interstellar space had not been observed in this form so far.

These envelopes are of great importance for our understanding of the evolution of stars in their final phase. Moreover, they help us to understand how they enrich the interstellar space with heavy elements, which are then in turn important for the evolution of planetary systems, such as our own, explains Kimeswenger the importance of the newly discovered galactic nebulae and adds an explanation for why the probability of their discovery is low: They are too large for the field of view of modern telescopes and at the same time they are very faint. Moreover, their lifetime is rather short, at least when considered in cosmic time scales. It is only a few hundred thousand years.

The starting point for this unique discovery is a group of German-French amateur astronomers: With painstaking work they searched historical celestial images for unknown objects in the now digitized archives and finally found a fragment of a nebula on photographic plates from the 1980s.

With their finding, the group contacted international scientific experts, including the Department for Astro and Particle Physics at the University of Innsbruck, which is very experienced in this field. By compiling and combining observations from the past 20 years, stemming from public archives of various telescopes and with data from four different space satellites, the researchers in Innsbruck were able to rule out their first assumption, namely the discovery of a planetary nebula caused by the remnants of dying stars. The enormous extent of the nebula finally became apparent with the help of measurements taken by telescopes in Chile. Scientists in the USA finally completed these observations with spectrographs: The diameter of the main cloud is 15.6 light-years across, almost 1 million times larger than the distance of the earth to the sun and much larger than the distance of our sun to its nearest neighboring star. Moreover, fragments as large as 39 light-years apart have also been found. Since the object lies slightly above the Milky Way, the nebula was able to develop largely undisturbed by other clouds in the surrounding gas, Kimeswenger describes the discovery.

By combining all this information, the researchers have succeeded in creating a model of the object: It consists of a close binary system of a 66,500-degree white dwarf star and a normal star with a mass slightly below that of the Sun. Both orbit each other in only 8 hours and 2 minutes and at a distance of only 2.2 solar radii. Due to the small distance, the companion star with a temperature of only about 4,700 degrees is strongly heated at the side facing the white dwarf, which leads to extreme phenomena in the spectrum of the star and to very regular variations in brightness. Around both stars there is a gigantic envelope consisting of the outer material of the white dwarf. At just over one solar mass, this material is heavier than the white dwarf and its companion star and was ejected into space some 500,000 years ago.

Another part of the puzzle related to the discovery of the new class of galactic nebulae has not yet been solved, Stefan Kimeswenger says: It is even possible that this system is related to a nova observation made by Korean and Chinese astronomers in 1086. In any case, the positions of the historical observations match very well with those of our object described here.

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Astronomers Discover New Class of Galactic Nebulae - SciTechDaily

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications

Thursday

NASA is preparing to launch its most ambitious astronomical observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, to an outpost four times farther away from the Earth than the moon. With their respective research teams, Marcia and George Rieke, both Regents Professors in the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, have been instrumental in developing technology that will enable the telescope to peer deeper back in time and space than any instrument before it.

The husband-and-wife research team also helped the field of infrared astronomy, once a niche endeavor fraught with extreme technical challenges, flourish into a powerful discipline that has allowed us to see the universe in ways that were deemed impossible 50 years ago.

Ahead of the launch, now planned for no earlier than Dec. 24, Lo Que Pasa spoke with the Riekes about what they hope to see with Webb, and how they became first involved with studying the cosmos and with each other.

George:When NASA built Spitzer (a previous generation space telescope), I remember being ushered into a clean room and there were the three instruments, including mine, all mounted on the cryostat (the device that keeps the telescope cool enough for operation). And I said a little prayer to myself: "Please never let me see these again." Because, obviously, I thought if I saw them again, it meant there was a big problem.

Marcia: I'm excited to get off the ground, then I'm excited to have the solar array deploy half an hour later, and I'm excited to have midcourse correction. All those steps, I'm excited about seeing every one of them go by.

George:I'm excited for our teams of young researchers who are counting on JWST data to further their careers. They have spent years working with us to make this happen, and this is a big deal for them, especially after all these delays the project experienced, which can be demoralizing.

George:We do not really understand the origin of quasars and active galactic nuclei, because some of them may be so hidden in dust that they just can't be found with current observatories. But they cannot hide from MIRI (the Mid-Infrared Instrument that George Rieke's group helped develop).

Marcia: I've always wanted to find the most distant galaxies and trace how galaxies changed from that epoch all the way down to the current times. My other goal is to look at the atmospheres of exoplanets and understand their composition.

George: JWST will only look a little bit further than we alreadyhave with Hubble BUT it will look much closer to the Big Bang. So, if you're counting from the Big Bang, it's going to get twice as close, rather than 5% further back than we have looked, and that is a very important distinction.

Marcia: On my optimistic days, I hope that we can see back to only 200 million years after the Big Bang.

Marcia:That's the $95 question.

George:No, that's the $10 billion question!

Marcia: We don't know.

George: As far back as we've been able to look, everything still looks pretty darn familiar. There are galaxies, there are stars and, yes, compared to modern galaxies, these early galaxies have slightly different shapes. They're a little smaller, but all that is kind of "so what." By getting twice as close to the Big Bang, we're really pushing back to the time when things SHOULD look different. But we don't know HOW they're different. Who knows what we'll find.

Marcia: My first job out of graduate school was here at the university. I was working with George as a postdoc, and I've not ever left. He was assistant professor at the time I showed up. When I was doing my thesis research, George arranged for the telescope and detector package that I used and he helped me figure out how to use it, so he was quite important for getting my thesis done.

George:I was offered a job here at the university, and I took it because I thought that it would broaden my science if I got into this new field. Just to show you how simple things were in those days compared to today: I went observing with a postdoc who worked for Frank Low (late Regents Professor Emeritus who helped establish modern infrared astronomy) at the time. After spending three nights observing with him, I went to the same telescope to start my own observations, and Frank drew a little diagram of how to find the telescope and he wished me luck. He did not come along to check things out. It was that simple. I could take the instrument, a very crude instrument detecting infrared light at 10 microns, to the telescope, mount it, get it going and get data. And when he says "simple," think of a single pixel that measures how bright a circular spot on the sky is. Now that's OK if you're measuring something that's a simple point source, like a single star. But if you want to map something so that you can make it look like a photo, you have to measure a spot, move the telescope, measure another spot, move the telescope and so on. It's very tedious way to make a photo.

Marcia: Because astronomers are skeptical of other wavelengths.

George: I'm going to put it more succinctly: Nobody liked us.

Marcia:Part of it was that most of the people who started out doing infrared astronomy were actually not astronomers. They were physicists like us. We speak a different language. In one of the early papers that we published together, we used a strange unit of energy, the "watt." (Laughing) Astronomers weren't used to that.

George:Science works by paradigms; there's a structure of thinking. Scientists have learned to be very suspicious of anything outside their paradigm, and so, when there's a totally new initiative, like infrared astronomy, the optical astronomers were automatically suspicious that there's something wrong with this.

Marcia: (Laughing) Well, the perks are that we get to go on trips together.

George:We have a lot to talk about on business, we have less to talk about on other things so, you know, in some sense it's a little limiting. But in another sense, it is very expansive because we can talk in depth about the things we're both working on.

Marcia: We read each other's papers and grant proposals, we tend to share a lot, we run ideas past each other and so on.

Marcia: I will say, "You forgot that this fact is XYZ," and he'll say, 'Oh, but you're misinterpreting THAT fact.' (Both laugh.)

Marcia: I hope that we'll be in the big lecture hall at Steward Observatory, and that we'll have our teams there and watch on the big screen. Since the launch is at 5:20 in the morning, I suspect we'll do the celebrating a bit later. We're going to have such a collective sigh of relief when we see that rocket go up.

George: We're having an argument about that. I think we should bring Champagne, but Marcia thinks it's too early to drink. (Both laugh.)

This interview originally appeared on the UA@Work website: https://uaatwork.arizona.edu/lqp/meet-riekes-husband-and-wife-team-helped-get-infrared-astronomy-ground

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Meet the Husband-and-Wife Team that Helped Get Infrared Astronomy off the Ground - UANews

Every 10 years, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issues a report that helps set the research priorities for the astronomy and astrophysics communities for the next decade.

Bruce Macintosh (Image credit: Courtesy Stanford Department of Physics)

The seventh and latest Decadal Survey, published earlier this fall, recommended a number of new and ambitious ground- and space-based observatories and missions for discovering extrasolar planets planets beyond our solar system resembling Earth; studying colliding black holes and other cosmic cataclysms; and understanding the origin and evolution of galaxies. It also outlined new initiatives to help make sure the tools and technologies critical to these missions are developed on time and on budget. And in a departure from past Decadal Surveys, this latest report also focused on broader issues affecting the astronomy and astrophysics communities, including the diversity and mental health of their practitioners and their relationship to society at large.

Stanford astronomer Bruce Macintosh was a member of the National Academies committee that issued the 614-page report, titled Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s.

Macintosh, whose research focuses on directly imaging extrasolar planets, spoke to Stanford News about the reports conclusions and recommendations.

The Decadal Survey recommends that NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) construct several new space- and ground-based observatories, respectively. How will the observatories differ from one another, and what will they be studying?

On the ground, there are three big recommendations to NSF. The highest priority is a federal role in one or two Extremely Large Telescope project collaborations about 25 percent in each the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope. These are general-purpose facilities that can do almost any kind of astrophysics, from mapping nearby asteroids to the first galaxies billions of light years away, as well as study exoplanets.

The longest-term recommendation is the Next Generation Very Large Array (NGVLA). The current VLA is a network of radio telescope dishes in New Mexico that combine to form a single telescope 20 miles across we call this a radio interferometer. The NGVLA would replace this with a new array that would cover most of the continental U.S., taking advantage of modern computing to combine this into a single telescope thousands of miles across. It would also do a lot of different science missions.

The third ground recommendation, which is joint to NSF and the Department of Energy, is to build a more specialized array of radio telescopes to look at the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) the radiation left over from the Big Bang. Importantly, the Decadal didnt recommend it just for cosmology and the early universe the telescope will be surveying the whole sky and will be able to see clusters of galaxies, stellar explosions, etc., and the project has to make the data available to everyone.

In space, the biggest recommendation is a big optical/infrared/ultraviolet telescope optimized for studying Earth-like planets, and the Great Observatories program more on that below. While those are developing, there will be a regular program for a new kind of mission called a Probe. About the cost of the [$690 million] Stanford-led Fermi spacecraft, these are powerful but specialized missions; teams will compete to see who gets to lead which mission. The two Probe missions proposed so far are a far-infrared telescope that could study dust in early galaxies or trace water as planets are forming, or an X-ray telescope with incredibly precise optics to make ultra-sharp images of things like black holes.

According to the survey, exoplanets should be a major research focus for the field in the coming decade. Why is that? And what do astronomers want to learn about planets beyond our solar system?

Exoplanets are a focus because theyre awesome

A Q&A with astronomer Bruce Macintosh on what people should understand about exoplanets planets outside our solar system and what exoplanet research means for life on Earth.

But more seriously, were in a position to make some really transformative discoveries. In the past decade weve been studying exoplanets but mostly by counting them figuring out how many planets of different sizes exist. We have no idea what many of them are really like.

Now were starting to study them in detail and measure their atmospheres. With the telescopes we have right now, we can do that for giant planets (Neptune- or Jupiter-sized) that are either very close to their star or very far away.

In the next decade, well measure the spectra, or light, of new kinds of planets. Even the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launching later this month will still be limited to planets close to their stars closer than Mercury is to our sun but sensitive enough to measure the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets. Most will be superheated, but some, orbiting close to the smallest and coldest stars, could have Earth-like conditions such as liquid water on their surface. The Extremely Large Telescopes will play a role too, probing planets like our own gas giants, and helping put together a comprehensive picture of how planets form and evolve and maybe approach conditions for life.

What other research priorities did the committee suggest the astronomy and astrophysics community focus on in the coming decade?

Other than stars and planets, the committee identified two additional major research themes and priority areas within them. For thousands of years astronomers have studied the universe with light whether thats visible light or X-ray light or radio light. But the universe throws a lot of other things at us cosmic rays, neutrinos and the ripples in space we call gravitational waves. These new messengers come from energetic and exotic physics. New messenger projects will focus on the dynamic universe, which I mostly consider to be things that blow up exploding stars, black holes crashing into each other.

The third theme is cosmic ecosystems. The universe is made out of three kinds of things. The moderately mysterious one is dark matter something invisible and intangible that still contributes most of the mass and gravity in the universe. The most mysterious is dark energy, the force accelerating the universe apart. The third is ordinary matter gas and dust and stars.

Although ordinary matter seems the least mysterious, in some ways its the hardest to model with our computers, because matter can interact with itself in so many ways. The priority focus within this theme is the growth of galaxies. Thanks to people like Risa Weschler, were beginning to understand how dark matter condenses to form the gravitational well of galaxies. The facilities of the 2020s map dark matter by seeing the light of stars under its influence. New facilities will study the gas and dust and the feedback that comes from gravitational wells gas turning into stars that then explode and blow the gas right out of the galaxy and the details of how galaxies form and make stars and planets.

The committee recommends that NASA establish a new initiative, called the Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program (GOMTMP), that would represent a fundamental shift in how NASA plans and develops large astronomy projects. What are some key aspects of this initiative?

Big space-based telescopes are extremely expensive ranging from $3 billion for the Chandra X-ray Observatory to $10 billion for Hubble and JWST. These are scientifically amazing but have also had complicated track records. For example, the cost of JWST has grown enormously since a previous Decadal recommended it.

The GOMTMP is supposed to reduce the uncertainty. Before a new space mission would truly start, NASA would make a major investment in developing the technology and the mission design early, so that when a mission is finally approved to start, NASA and scientists and Congress would have an accurate estimate of what it costs and know whether or not its feasible.

What role do you see Stanford playing in the projects outlined in the survey?

Stanford is in a good position to be involved in many of these initiatives. The current fourth-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment, or CMB S4, grows out of previous CMB projects that we are leaders in, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford will be a major part of the collaboration. Stanford scientists and engineers have been working on the detectors for the next-generation X-ray telescopes, and the Probe mission concept provides a good way for universities and national labs to join and compete to help lead these missions. Our exoplanet scientists will likely be part of the process that defines the LuvEx mission [a new infrared/optical/UV telescope proposed in the Decadal].

This Decadal also focused on broad issues such as increasing diversity and inclusion in the profession and maintaining the mental health of its practitioners. Can you talk more about that?

A new thing this survey includes is a careful, thoughtful look at the state of our profession and its relationship to society. Astronomy is amazing and exciting. But we also need to make sure its humane and just, that we treat people in it well, that we reflect the population of the nation, and that we respect the people whose mountains we build telescopes on. A whole chapter and appendix of the report are devoted to this discussing the profession, ways in which we are improving, while acknowledging our failures on diversity, harassment and our complicated history, and continuing the (long) process of remedying these failings.

KIPAC and Stanford astrophysics have been leaders in improving equity and inclusion in the profession of astrophysics, and the voices of people like me and Risa will be important to advancing the improvements the survey recommended.

What must happen now for any of these proposed projects to become a reality?

First, we need to do a lot of engineering and management and design proving these projects are feasible and getting the best estimate as to how much they cost.

Then, building them will require real national will these are grand projects. Congress has to approve them. For that, astronomers and the public have to make it clear that these really are priorities that answering fundamental questions about the universe is something that we want to do as a nation.

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Astronomy's newest 10-year plan focuses on alien Earths | Stanford News - Stanford University News

Theres something truly captivating about looking up at the night sky and pondering the nature of the stars above us. While that may sound overly lyrical or philosophical, humanity has been studying the stars for millennia now, and questions about our place in the universe and even the solar system have come to the forefront with newer and better technology.

While cosmology (and astrophysics) is certainly interesting, theres no reason why you cant also take part in a couple of interesting hobbies related to the stars: Astronomy and Astrophotography. In fact, San Francisco has some great places to do a bit of both, and after a little shopping there's no reason you can't start partaking in this fun and fulfilling hobby.

Before starting out, theres a couple of tips you should keep in mind.

First, light pollution is the enemy of astronomy because it drowns out the light coming from the stars. Thats why using a light pollution map is going to come in handy for figuring out where exactly to do your thing.

Second, astronomy doesnt have to be expensive and as youll see later, there are some good starter telescope kits to help you get going for only a coupled hundred dollars. Even without a telescope, you can pick up a really good book on astronomy for beginners, Nightwatch, and just go out and look at the stars.

Finally, and this more of a general tip: It can get chilly at night, especially in places where there isnt much light pollution, so be sure to take warm clothing, water, food, and a first aid kit, since you might be far away from civilization for a while.

Now when it comes to actual astronomy and astrophotography probably one of the best places in SF to do some star gazing is Strawberry Hill in Golden Gate Park. Not only is it quiet and secluded, but its also not that well known, especially by tourists, so you arent likely to get crowded out. Its also remote enough to cut down on the light pollution which makes it easier to see the stars.

Lands End is also another great point, especially on clear nights theres an amazing view of the sky. Actually, the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers host star parties near the USS San Francisco Memorial you can catch as well.

Moving on to the East Bay, probably one of the best spots is the Sibley Volcanic National Reserve, as its well protected from light pollution by the hills. That being said, arguably the best spot of all is Mount Diablo. Its a bit of a drive but it cuts out a ton of light pollution, and in the summer, you get an awesome view of the Milky Way.

Then, over on the South Bay, there are a few observatories that might be worth checking out, but if you want to rough it on your own, the Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve is where you want to go. I mean, the name is even in the title! Youll find some great sky views there with limited to no light pollution, which is great.

Finally, the Noth Bay has two great spots: Mt. Tamalpais and Muir Beach Overlook. Theyre both popular spots in both the daytime and the nighttime, so you might find others out there doing some stargazing as well, which is great if you want to connect (and not so much if youre a lone-wolf introvert like me!).

Right, now that you know there where lets look at the how, at least in terms of equipment.

First things first youll need some form of telescope, and the Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ is an excellent starter kit. It comes with the telescope (of course), an equatorial mount, which is fancy speak for a tripod that adjusts for the earths rotation, as well as a couple of eyepieces and three lenses. If youre willing to fork over a little more cash, the Celestron AstroMaster 102AZ is a fancier choice with a more powerful telescope, and a slightly better mount and set of lenses.

AstroMaster 102AZ Refractor Telescope

Celestron

amazon.com

$435.99

If youre going to do astrophotography, thats a bit more complicated... and expensive. For example, youll need to use a motorized mount since taking pictures of the stars require long exposure shots. A couple of options are the Orion AstroView EQ Mount which is a good budget option, or the Celestron Advanced VX Computerized Mount, which is expensive, but probably one of the best-in-class.

Celestron Advanced VX Computerized Mount 91519

Celestron

amazon.com

$2598.98

Youll also want a good auto-guider that connects to the mount and helps it keep a fixed point in the moving sky. The Orion StarShoot AutoGuider is what you need, although it is expensive. Just be aware you dont necessarily need an auto-guider, it just makes life much easier.

Orion 52064 StarShoot AutoGuider

Orion

amazon.com

$299.99

Then of course theres a camera adaptor for the telescope. The SVBONY Telescope Camera Adapter and/or the SVBONY T2 T Ring Adapter should cover most camera and telescope pairings, although always make sure to double-check the threading on the adaptor to see that it fits both.

Ring Adapter and T Adapter

SVBONY

amazon.com

$13.99

Id also recommend getting light pollution filters, especially if youre near the city. The SVBONY Telescope Filter should work for most telescopes and the SVBONY Camera Filter should work for most cameras. Speaking of light pollution, youll want to use a red light, rather than a traditional white light, since white light will overwhelm the light receptors in your eye and make it harder to see at night.

SVBONY Telescope Filter

SVBONY

amazon.com

$72.99

Finally, theres a bunch of software that will come in handy when working with astrophotography. For example, the Astro Photography Tool is great for controlling your camera, whereas the Cartes du Ciel and Stellarium pieces of software will help with mount control. Also, since astrophotography requires a bit of image processing, youll probably need the Deep SkyStacker app, or if youre willing to pay, Images Plus, which is a bit fancier and has more functions.

Id like to end this piece by giving you a few cool local resources to check out, especially if youre really interested in getting deeper into astronomy.

For starters, theres the Astronomical Association of Northern California, the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers (SFAA), and The Astronomy Connection (TAC). All of these are great amateur associations that cater to astronomy enthusiasts.

Theres also the Chabot Observatory and the Foothill College Observatory, both are great for shows, exhibits, classes and facility rentals. On the other hand, if youre looking for something to mix both entertainment and academics, theres the Fujitsu Planetarium and the Morrison Planetarium. They have everything from light shows to lectures, and are great if you want to get your kids into astronomy.

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How to get into astronomy and astrophotography in the Bay Area - SFGate

What do astronomers eat for breakfast on the day that their $10 billion telescope launches into space? Their fingernails.

You work for years and it all goes up in a puff of smoke, said Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona.

Dr. Rieke admits her fingers will be crossed on the morning of Dec. 24 when she tunes in for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. For 20 years, she has been working to design and build an ultrasensitive infrared camera that will live aboard the spacecraft. The Webb is the vaunted bigger and more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers expect that it will pierce a dark curtain of ignorance and supposition about the early days of the universe, and allow them to snoop on nearby exoplanets.

After $10 billion and years of delays, the telescope is finally scheduled to lift off from a European launch site in French Guiana on its way to a point a million miles on the other side of the moon. (Late on Tuesday, NASA delayed the launch at least two days).

An informal and totally unscientific survey of randomly chosen astronomers revealed a community sitting on the edges of their seats feeling nervous, proud and grateful for the team that has developed, built and tested the new telescope over the last quarter-century.

I will almost certainly watch the launch and be terrified the entire time, said Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a professor of physics and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire.

And there is plenty to be anxious about. The Ariane 5 rocket that is carrying the spacecraft has seldom failed to deliver its payloads to orbit. But even if it survives the launch, the telescope will have a long way to go.

Over the following month it will have to execute a series of maneuvers with 344 single points of failure in order to unfurl its big golden mirror and deploy five thin layers of a giant plastic sunscreen that will keep the telescope and its instruments in the cold and dark. Engineers and astronomers call this interval six months of high anxiety because there is no prospect of any human or robotic intervention or rescue should something go wrong.

But if all those steps succeed, what astronomers see through that telescope could change everything. They hope to spot the first stars and galaxies emerging from the primordial fog when the universe was only 100 million years or so old, in short the first steps out of the big bang toward the cozy light show we inhabit today.

The entire astronomy community, given the broad range of anticipated science returns and discovery potential, has skin in the game with the telescope, said Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale. We are all intellectually and emotionally invested.

But the telescope has been snake bitten during its long development with cost overruns and expensive accidents that have added to the normal apprehension of rocket launches.

Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the Kavli Foundation in Los Angeles and past president of the American Physical Society, described the combination of excitement and terror, he expected to feel during the launch.

The next decade of astronomy and astrophysics is predicated on J.W. being successful, Dr. Turner said, referring to the James Webb Space Telescope, and U.S. prestige and leadership in space and science are also on the line. That is a heavy burden to carry, but we know how to do great things.

That opinion was echoed by Martin Rees of Cambridge University and the Astronomer Royal for the British royal households.

Any failure of JWST would be disastrous for NASA, he wrote in an email. But if the failure involves a mechanical procedure unfurling a blind, or unfolding the pieces of the mirror this will be a mega-catastrophic and embarrassing P.R. disaster. Thats because it would involve a failure of something seemingly simple that everyone can understand.

Dr. Natarajan, who will use the Webb to search for the origins of supermassive black holes, said, I am trying to be Zen and not imagine disastrous outcomes.

But in describing the stakes, she compared the telescope to other milestones of human history.

Remarkable enduring achievements of human hand and mind, be it the temples of Mahabalipuram, the pyramids of Giza, the Great Wall or the Sistine Chapel have all taken time and expense, she said. I truly see JWST as one such monument of our times.

Alan Dressler of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, who was chair of a committee 25 years ago that led to the Webb project, responded with his own question when asked how nervous he was.

When you know someone is about to have critical surgery, would you sit around and have a conversation about what if it fails? he wrote. He added that his colleagues know there is no certainty here, and it does no good for any of us to ruminate about it.

Another astronomer who has been involved with this project from the beginning, Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in an email that he was optimistic about the launch despite his reputation of being a glass is half empty kind of guy.

The deployments are complex but my view is that all that is humanly possible has been done! he wrote. He said that even if there were surprises in the telescopes deployment, he did not expect these to be either major or mission terminating not at all.

Other respondents to my survey also took refuge from their nervousness in the skill and dedication of their colleagues.

Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los Angeles, who won the Nobel Prize in 2020 for her observations of the black hole in the center of our galaxy, said she kept herself sane by trusting that really smart people have worked really hard to get things right.

That thought was seconded by Tod Lauer, an astronomer at NOIRLab in Tucson, Ariz., who was in the thick of it when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched and found to have a misshapen mirror, which required repair visits by astronauts on the now-retired space shuttles. He said his feelings regarding the upcoming launch were all about the engineers and technicians who built the Webb telescope.

You very quickly respect the team nature of doing anything in space, and your dependence on scientists and engineers that you may never even know to get it all right, he said. Nobody wants it to fail, and I have yet to meet anyone in this who didnt take their part seriously.

He added that astronomers had to trust their colleagues in rocket and spacecraft engineering to get it right.

Someone who knows how to fly a $10 billion spacecraft on a precision trajectory is not going to be impressed by an astronomer, who never took an engineering course in his life, cowering behind his laptop watching the launch, Dr. Lauer said. You feel admiration and empathy for those people, and try to act worthy of the incredible gift that they are bringing to world.

And if anything does go wrong, some astronomers said they would keep in perspective that its only hardware, not people, at stake.

Should anything bad happen, I will be heartbroken, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein said. I am glad that at least human lives arent on the line.

There was also a lot to look forward to if everything works as intended, said Dr. Rieke, who worked on the telescopes infrared imaging device.

When the camera turns on well have another party, she said.

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James Webb Space Telescope Launch Is Making Astronomers Very Anxious - The New York Times

Astronomers have captured the deepest and sharpest images of the Milky Way's center ever, enabling scientists to estimate the mass of the giant black hole at our galaxy's heart with unmatched precision.

The Milky Way observations, made with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, also revealed a previously unknown star orbiting close to our galaxy's mysterious central black hole, called Sagittarius A*.

The Very Large Telescope is one of the world's most advanced optical space observatories. Consisting of four main telescopes, each 27 feet in diameter (8.2 meters), and four auxiliary telescopes, 6 feet in diameter (1.8 m), the observatory can detect stellar objects four billion times fainter than what can be seen with the naked eye.

A technique called interferometry enables astronomers to combine the light coming through the four main telescopes into a single image. Astronomers have been using interferometry for years, but its latest iteration provides a jaw-dropping 20-fold improvement in sharpness and detail compared to the images obtained by the individual telescopes, researchers said.

Related: Milky Way's galactic core overflows with colorful threads in new panorama

"The VLTI gives us this incredible spatial resolution and with the new images we reach deeper than ever before," Julia Stadler, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, who led the imaging campaign, said in a statement. "We are stunned by their amount of detail, and by the action and number of stars they reveal around the black hole."

Since the black hole in the Milky Way's center emits no light, it cannot be directly observed. Astronomers can only learn about its properties by studying the motions of the stars in its vicinity.

"Following stars on close orbits around Sagittarius A* allows us to precisely probe the gravitational field around the closest massive black hole to Earth, to test general relativity, and to determine the properties of the black hole," Reinhard Genzel, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 for his decades-long research of Sagittarius A*, said in the statement. Genzel is also a co-author of the new study.

The measurements, conducted between March and July 2021, revealed that Sagittarius A* has a mass of 4.3 million suns and sits at a distance of 27,000 light-years from Earth. Both of these figures are the most precise estimates of their kind to date.

During the campaign, the astronomers observed the star S29, the closest known star to Sagittarius A*, zooming by the black hole at a distance of just 8 billion miles (13 billion kilometers). That is only about 90 times the distance from Earth to the sun. During this close pass, the star travelled at a record-breaking speed of 5,430 miles per second (8,740 kilometers per second).

But the observations also discovered a completely new star in this dense region close to the galaxy's heart. Named S300, the star's discovery is a promising development for further research into this intriguing part of the galactic system.

The research is part of an international project called GRAVITY, which is developing new techniques for analyzing images of the Milky Way's galactic center with the goal of mapping the surroundings of Sagittarius A* in the greatest possible detail. The astronomers hope that in the future, they will be able to detect stars much fainter than S29 and S300 and orbiting even closer to the black hole. The orbits of these close stars may reveal information about the black hole's rotation. The astronomers hope to make major leaps after the completion of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope, which will become the world's largest optical space observatory when it comes online in about 2025.

"With GRAVITY and the ELT's powers combined, we will be able to find out how fast the black hole spins," Frank Eisenhauer, an astronomer at MPE and principal investigator of the GRAVITY project, said in the statement. "Nobody has been able to do that so far."

The new research is described in two papers published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on Tuesday (Dec. 14).

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Astronomers peer deeper into Milky Way's heart than ever before with new telescope images - Space.com