World’s Largest Digital Camera (LSST) Gets Approval
If you think your new 14 megapixel camera is powerful, take a look at the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. Designed by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory,…
Telescope News
Gamma Rays Conclusions Based on Fermi Data
Roughly four years after Fermi began studying gamma-rays, a soon-to-be-published study documents interesting findings. It turns out that the Crab Nebula and other individual point…
Fermi Finds Celestial Sources of Photons, Some Unexplainable
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope has detected enough energetic photons to produce the first all-sky map of the very high energy universe. Since Fermi’s launch in…
Inclined Orbit to Improve Space Telescope Sensitivity
Dust and light from the zodiacal cloud in our solar system interfere with infrared, optical, and ultraviolet observations. By placing a space telescope on an…
Brightest Gravitationally Magnified Galaxy Discovered
Using computational tools that reversed the effect of gravitational lensing, scientists were able see what a galaxy looked like 10 billion years ago. Gravity from…
Astronomy Team Discovers Companion Galaxy to NGC 4449
Researchers at UCLA used a Centurion 28 telescope at the Polaris Observatory Association to discover a small companion galaxy to NGC 4449. Named NGC 4449B,…
NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer Set to be Decommissioned
Launched on April 28, 2003, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or Galex, was on a mission to study aspects of galaxies across 10 billion years of…
Superconducting Detectors Could Help Find Gravitational Waves and Extrasolar Planets
Microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs), which can simultaneously count photons, measure their energy, and record each one’s time of arrival, could eventually replace charge-coupled devices…
Giant Magellan Telescope Gets Seven 28-Foot Mirrors and Adaptive Optics
The Giant Magellan Telescope is designed to employ a series of seven 28-foot (8.5 meters) mirrors, which will be arranged in a honeycomb pattern. It…
VISTA Telescope Uses IR to Show Helix Nebula In New Light
The Helix Nebula in the Aquarius constellation, located some 700 light-years away from Earth, was just observed by the piercing infrared gaze of the VISTA…
Adaptive Optics Will Put Gemini Twin Telescopes at the Forefront of Astronomy Again
Together, the twin telescopes of the Gemini Observatory, which consists of two 8.1 m (27 ft) telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, provide almost complete coverage…
DARPA’s Galileo Program to Image Objects in GEO Faster
Current technology is limited for imaging objects in space since researchers use astronomical long-baseline interferometers and can only view objects from limited angles. DARPA is…
SN Primo Is Farthest Type Ia Supernova Discovered
Supernova Primo originated 9 billion years ago, when its progenitor star exploded. The light was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope by a three-year project…
Largest Galaxy Cluster in Distant Universe Found by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory
The largest galaxy cluster in the distant universe has been found and nicknamed “El Gordo,” which is much easier to say than the official name…
Comet Lovejoy Streaks Past Desert Telescope
On December 22, Guillaume Blanchard of the European Southern Observatory captured one amazing image that features two impressive objects together: comet Lovejoy and ESO’s Telescope,…
SOFIA Looking Deep Into the Orion Nebula
It’s amazing to think that a NASA telescope mounted in a specially modified Boeing 747SP jet can look into the heart of a nebula where…
Hubble Reaches New Milestone: 10,000th Scientific Paper Published
As if we needed any reminders, it just illustrates how the Hubble Space Telescope has been one of the most successful scientific endeavors ever undertaken…
Youngest Supernova Photographed
The death of a star has been captured on film just fourteen days after the explosion occurred, marking the supernova in the galaxy Galàxia del…