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COMPACT GALAXIES IN EARLY UNIVERSE PACK A BIG PUNCH
Baltimore, Md. (April 29th, 2008) Imagine receiving an announcement touting the birth of a baby 20 inches long and weighing 180 pounds. After reading this puzzling message, you would immediately think the baby’s weight was a misprint. Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, received a […]
Read More >Planetary Debris Disks
(April 24, 2008) Dr. James Graham from the University of California at Berkeley presents “Planetary Debris Disks”. Planetary debris disks are circumstellar clouds of dust detected in young planetary systems. This dust is believed to be released by collisions between larger bodies such as comets, asteroids and even planets. Although this dust was discovered in […]
Read More >Recycling and Synthesis in the Cosmos
(February 10, 2008) Dr. Mike Bolte from the University of California Observatories discusses the enormous advances being made in the study of stellar evolution and the genesis of elements from the simple to the complex. Bolte and his collaborators make observations of the oldest stars and star clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy to better […]
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NOVA PHENOMENON EXPLAINED WITH NULLING MODE AT KECK OBSERVATORY
MAUNA KEA (January 28th, 2008) First results from a new scientific instrument at W. M. Keck Observatory are helping scientists understand the physics behind recurrent novae, a type of cataclysmic star system. The results are overturning long-standing assumptions about powerful explosions called novae and have produced the first unified model for a nearby nova called […]
Read More >Cosmic Dawn: Pursuit of the First Galaxies
(January 16, 2008) Dr. Richard Ellis discusses how using a pioneering technique called “gravitational lensing” allows an international team of astronomers to measure traces of the very first galaxies formed after the Big Bang. Richard, the Steele Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, and his colleagues have made remarkable progress uncovering the […]
Read More >Making it Big in Astronomy
(December 19, 2007) In 1977 Jerry Nelson was physicist at UC’s Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and he was asked to join a group to vision the future of US astronomy. For Nelson it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to design a major apparatus with “cosmic implications.” His work translated into the revolutionary twin 10-meter Keck telescopes. Decades […]
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NASA Mega-Telescope Gears Up to Study Cosmos
(December 5th, 2007) NASA has selected three teams of scientists to begin studying disks of dust around nearby stars starting in February 2008, using the Keck Interferometer in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. This sophisticated new system combines the observing power of the two large Keck telescopes into a single mega-telescope. The announcement follows completion of the […]
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Keck Helps Discover Record Fifth Planet
Berkeley (November 6th, 2007) A team of American astronomers announced the discovery of a record-breaking fifth planet around the nearby star 55 Cancri, making it the only star aside from the sun known to have five planets. The discovery comes after 19 years of observations of 55 Cancri and represents a milestone for the California […]
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Morning forecast on Titan calls for widespread methane drizzle off Xanadu, according to Keck, VLT im
(October 11th, 2007) Berkeley — Noted for its bizarre hydrocarbon lakes and frozen methane clouds, Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, also appears to have widespread drizzles of methane, according to a team of astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley. New near-infrared images from Hawaii’s W. M. Keck Observatory and Chile’s Very Large Telescope show for […]
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Scientists ‘Weigh’ Tiny Galaxy Halfway Across Universe
(October 4th, 2007) Santa Barbara, California –– A tiny galaxy, nearly halfway across the universe, the smallest in size and mass known to exist at that distance, has been identified by an international team of scientists led by two from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The scientists used data collected by NASA’s Hubble Space […]
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