telescope
Latest
ARKYD space telescope reaches its funding goal, new add-ons await (video)
And communal space astronomy is go. Planetary Resources has successfully hit the $1 million crowdfunding target for its ARKYD telescope, which should now be on track for its promised 2015 launch. The project has also racked up 11,000 backers, and that means a new round of add-ons for the extra-committed. Backers can buy a special mission patch ($7), additional selfie photos (from $25) and even a half-size ARKYD replica ($650). There are a few more pragmatic reasons to invest, of course -- the company has stretch goals that could bring a second ground station, selfies during the beta phase and even hunts for undiscovered planets. Would-be researchers who still want to pitch in can visit Kickstarter by June 30th.
Insert Coin: Planetary Resources ARKYD space telescope will take your selfies from space in 2015
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. We've seen the Arkyd 100 telescope before, Planetary Resources' impressively small asteroid-hunting machine that offers performance matching any on-earth scope (yes, even the really big ones on the tops of mountains) in a package that's about the size of a quarter keg of beer. Its length of 425mm fully deployed (16.7 inches) is absolutely dwarfed by Earth's current great orbital scope: the Hubble Space Telescope, which is 13.2 meters (or 43 feet) long. The space shuttle cargo bay could carry a single Hubble into orbit. If it were still operating, it could take a thousand Arkyd 100 scopes in a single shot. But, of course, it isn't still operating, which is perhaps partly why Planetary Resources is looking for $1 million in earthly support. The extra-orbital mining company has turned to Kickstarter to raise a little early funding and to help get its first fully functional Arkyd 100 scope into orbit. If you jump in early, you can get your face in orbit too -- well, a picture of it anyway. More details after the break.%Gallery-189607%
ILOA details its ILO-X lunar telescope, wants it on the Moon in 2015
The International Lunar Observatory Association and Moon Express have spent years working on their privately-backed, Moon-bound ILO-X telescope. Today, they can finally share the nuts-and-bolts details of their flight test hardware. Not surprisingly, the roughly shoebox-sized device won't come close to matching Hubble between its tiny 130mm, f/5.6 aperture and 6.4-megapixel resolution. However, oneupmanship isn't the point -- ILOA mostly wants its inaugural telescope to be accessible enough that schools, scientists and the public at large can get a peek at deep space through the internet. Most of the challenge rests in getting ILO-X to its ultimate destination. Moon Express won't deliver the telescope to the Moon until sometime in 2015, which will leave us waiting some time for another vantage point on the universe.
Photographing the moon with an iPhone
Stargazers and amateur astronomers might be shocked to hear that, with the right equipment, the iPhone makes a perfect camera to photograph the moon. Writing on his 23x blog, Jared Earle reveals the surprising, simple steps he takes to get amazing shots of the moon. To start with, you need some kind of telescope to get such close-up shots. Earle uses a Celestron C5. He then uses the Magnifi adapter to attach his iPhone 4S to the telescope. Once the two pieces of hardware are connected, Earle launches the Cortex Camera app (US$2.99) to snap his pics. The app uses dozens of individual photos to assemble one highly detailed, noise-free one. If you're hoping to get some great snaps of the moon, Jared Earle's piece is a must-read. I particularly like his tip about using Apple's EarPods with Remote and Mic as a shutter release. [Image by Jared Earle]
OLPC working on XO laptop telescope and microscope peripherals (hands-on)
So much of what children are taught in the sciences amounts to abstractions. It's a shame, really -- concepts of the universe are so much easier to extrapolate when we can see them for ourselves. OLPC's looking to give the classrooms it serves more access to the very big and very small with two new attachments that we had the opportunity to check out on a recent visit to the company's Miami office. First off is a telescope that secures to the side of its XO-4 laptop with a vice grip, utilizing the device's built-in camera. There's also a microscope that sits atop a swiveling base and plugs directly into one of the laptop's USB ports. Both peripherals run on Fedora-based software designed by the company. OLPC will be bringing these out as soon as it can get the price down through manufacturing. For the France-designed telescope, the company is aiming for $10, with a potentially lower price on the microscope. The idea is to get one of each in a classroom, rather than the one-to-one approach of its XO line.
NASA's Kepler discovers three potentially habitable planets
NASA's Kepler telescope has discovered three "super-Earth-size" exoplanets that are close enough to their stars to make them possibly suitable for water. Two of the planets (Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f) orbit a K2 dwarf estimated to be around 7 billion years old. Measuring at two-thirds the size of our sun, this cosmic lantern is orbited by a total of five planets, three of which are too close to be habitable for life. Kepler-69c, the biggest of this newly discovered trio is estimated to be 70 percent larger than Earth and takes 242 days to revolve around its sun-like star Kepler-69. While there's great excitement surrounding these new findings, this isn't the first time we've spotted a potentially habitable planet. A little over a year ago Kepler discovered Kepler-22b, an exoplanet about 600 light-years away from Earth believed to be covered in liquid. Like their predecessor, NASA has yet to determine if these newfound planets actually have water or a rocky composition. Until then, Ridley Scott might want to hold off on naming them as locations for his sequel to Prometheus.
Hawaii clears land use for the Thirty Meter Telescope, construction to start in 2014
The Thirty Meter Telescope has been under development for more than a decade, but the sheer amount of land needed on Hawaii's Mauna Kea for its namesake main mirror has proved problematic: locals have formally challenged the multi-university effort over concerns that it might damage both the environment and natives' heritage. Regardless of which stance you take on the issue, the project is going forward now that the state's Board of Land and Natural Resources has granted an official land permit. The move clears an optical and near-infrared telescope with nine times the coverage area of its peers, and three times the sharpness. That's enough to observe light from 13 billion years ago as well as put a heavy focus on tracking extrasolar planets, including planets in the making. Any impact on science or Mauna Kea will have to wait when construction doesn't even start until April 2014, although we're hoping that environmental care requirements attached to the permit will let us appreciate both the early universe and modern-day Earth in equal measure.
James Webb Space Telescope ready for its wings, on track for 2018 launch
What's a spacecraft need wings for? Packaging, of course. The James Webb Space telescope relies on a 21 foot diameter backplane mirror to steady it, but the assembly needs to fit inside of a 16.5 foot fairing to ride the rocket to the stars. A tight fit, to say the least. Fortunately, NASA technicians have just finished the mirror backplate support structure, a folding wing assembly designed with to safely collapse the beryllium mirror during flight, and expand it again in orbit. "This is another milestone that helps move Webb closer to its launch date in 2018," remarked Geoff Yoder, the program's director. Now that the wing assembly is finished, the team can focus on the support fixture for the instrument model, which will complete major construction and allow technicians to connect the finished pieces. We'll miss old Hubble, sure, but we're happy to see its successor pulling things together all the same.
Earth's largest telescope gets to work in Chile after 30 years of planning
Nestled within the Chilean Andes, the new Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA) is now open for space-staring business. The biggest, most complex telescope project to date, ALMA will be able to peer into the deeper reaches of space with "unprecedented power", according to astronomer Chris Hadfield. Covering around half of the universe's light spectrum, between infrared and radio waves, the new telescope should be able to detect distant planets, black holes and other intergalactic notables. The Chilean desert's lack of humidity was a big reason for the telescope's placement, 16,400 feet above sea-level, aiding precision of the scope. But it's a global project, with the US contributing $500 million and making it the NSF's biggest investment ever. From Japan, Fujitsu's contribution to exploring the final frontier consists of 35 PRIMERGY x86 servers, tied together with a dedicated (astronomy-centric) computational unit. The supercomputer will process 512 billion telescope samples per second, which ought to be more than enough to unlock a few more secrets of the cosmos.
Visualized: Carina Nebula captured with a 268-megapixel camera
Combine a state-of-the-art telescope with a 268-megapixel camera, point it at the sky, add in a bit of calculation and you could end up with a gorgeous photo of the Carina Nebula. That's exactly what the ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile did recently with its brand new VLT Survey Telescope -- just a portion of the resulting inaugural image is shown above. This isn't the first time the ESO has shown a love for large captures: it managed to stitch together a massive 9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way out of thousands of photographs taken with its VISTA telescope earlier this fall. However, with the 2.6-meter VLT and 268-megapixel OmegaCAM camera, the observatory is able to capture huge swaths of sky at a time -- no need for stitching here. The ESO says that it's the "largest telescope in the world exclusively dedicated to surveying the sky at visible wavelengths." As for the Carina Nebula, the star formation region is a popular choice among astronomers trying out new telescopes, and seeing how mesmerizing it is, we can't fault them for it. Click the source link below to see the whole image in all its zoomable glory.
DARPA SpaceView program enlists us to track space debris, save a satellite today (video)
Space junk is an undeniable problem when there's over 500,000 dead satellites, spacecraft pieces and other human-made obstacles that could crash into active orbiting vehicles. DARPA is more than a little overwhelmed in trying to track all those hazards by itself, so it's recruiting amateur help through its new SpaceView program. The effort will buy time for non-professional astronomers on existing telescopes, or even supply hardware directly, to track the spaceborne debris without the sheer expense of growing an existing surveillance network. While that amounts to using hobbyists purely as volunteers, DARPA notes that the strategy could be a win-win for some when hardware donated for SpaceView could be used for regular astronomy in spare moments. The challenge is getting through the sign-up phase. While SpaceView is taking applications now, it's initially focusing on options for standard commercial telescopes and hand-picking those who have permanent access to hardware in the right locations -- there's no guarantee a backyard observatory will pass muster. Those who do clear the bar might sleep well knowing that satellites and rockets should be that much safer in the future.
9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way reminds us just how small we truly are
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this just leaves us speechless. Pictured above is a compressed 108,500 x 81,500 pixel image of 84 million stars across central parts of the Milky Way. Taken by the VISTA survey telescope at the ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, this 9-gigapixel photo is the result of thousands of individual images being meshed together. If it were printed out at the average resolution of a standard book it would measure a mind-boggling 9 x 7 meters. Using three separate infrared filters, VISTA is able to see through dust fields that normally obscure the view of an optical telescope. By studying this monumental image, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of how galaxies form and evolve. If you'd like to take a look at this galactic work of art in its entirety, you can do so by visiting the source link below. (Image credit: ESO/VVV Consortium)
Hubble reveals XDF, the deepest view of the universe ever captured
That picture above is the deepest and most detailed view of the universe ever captured. It's called XDF, or eXtreme Deep Field, and was created using Hubble Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. It combines ten years of NASA Hubble Space photographs of a single sky sample into one full-color historic view of the galaxies. Hubble pointed at this patch of the constellation Fornax for fifty days, with an exposure time of 2 million seconds. A dazzling trip back in time, the image reveals almost 5,500 galaxies that include Andromeda, spirals similar to the Milky Way, along with remnants of galactic collisions. According to NASA, the XDF reveals galaxies that go as far back as 13.2 billion years. There's a video after the break describing how the shot was assembled; those interested in learning even more can participate in a Google+ webinar with the XDF team this Thursday, September 27th. Here's hoping that when NASA finally gets the James Webb Space Telescope going, we'll have an even deeper view into our galactic past.
Visualized: Telescope aboard suborbital NASA rocket takes clearest ever images of sun (video)
NASA has shown just what it can do with the short window of science allowed by its "sounding" or sensor-equipped suborbital rockets -- having taken the sharpest pictures ever of the sun's corona. A 460-pound telescope called the High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) was lofted for about 10 minutes into space, ample time for its mirrors to capture over 150 images of the solar fringe at 16-megapixels each, before parachuting back to earth. The scope shot exclusively in a sun-friendly high ultraviolet range and used innovative new optics consisting of an array of mirrors, allowing it to resolve the sun down to 135 miles. That bested the previous champ, NASA's own Solar Dynamics Observatory, with almost five times the magnification. For maximum effect, the space agency took advantage of an unusually high amount of solar activity to focus on a large, active sunspot. To see the results in glorious multihued HD, check the video after the break.
Project 1640 offers new way to search for planets beyond our solar system
It's taken more than six years of development, but a new imaging system for the Palomar Observatory's 200-inch Hale Telescope finally started capturing images last month, and promises to aid significantly in the search for planets outside our solar system (otherwise known as exoplanets). With the suitably mysterious name of "Project 1640," the new instrument is the first of its kind that's able to directly spot planets orbiting distant suns -- as opposed to existing systems that use indirect detection methods to determine the orbit of exoplanets. To do that, Project 1640 effectively blots out the light from stars, which allows astronomers to more clearly observe what might be around them, including objects up to 10 million times fainter than the star itself (the image on the right above is a nearby star captured with the imaging system in place, compared to the same star captured without the new system on the left). Those curious can find more specifics on just how that's accomplished in the official announcement linked below.
Crowd-funded group building asteroid-mapping telescope, saving Earth (video)
Just when you're numbing to robot, zombie and nuclear apocalypse scenarios, some old-fashioned asteroid paranoia pops up to surprise you. The B612 Foundation, which gets funding from, well, anyone, has just announced plans to launch Sentinel, a space telescope which will wander the vacuum cataloging asteroids in our inner solar system. Their goal is to track asteroid orbits and predict large impacts up to 100 years in advance, giving us plenty of time to find a solution (or enjoy our final days). Construction doesn't start til late fall, with the launch expected in around five years, so it won't be any use in disproving the 2012 doomsday believers out there. You can find out more about the project and donate to the foundation at the source link, or jump past the break for a video explanation, Aerosmith not included.
The new stars of reggae are nothing like the old ones
Earthly music just ain't enough for reggae / rock band Echo Movement. In search of extraterrestrial inspiration, they hooked up with researchers at Georgia Tech's Sonification Lab, which specializes in turning ugly numbers into beautiful music. Using data from NASA's Kepler telescope and its search for Earth II, SonLab generated "sequences of sonified musical pitches" from fluctuations in a star's brightness (meet Kepler 4665989). Echo Movement got their loop on and composed a harmony from the sequences, adding a tremolo effect from another star's pattern for a softer sound. Unfortunately, the finished track isn't out til September, but in the meantime you can hear the six-second celestial hook at the source link -- just don't blame us if you get pangs of Nokia-stalgia. Also, if you want to imagine how Echo Movement might use the sample, we've embedded one of their rarer songs -- that doesn't involve Spider-Man's girlfriend -- after the break.
Plans for European Extremely Large Telescope approved, is indeed extremely large
We see a lot of "world's largest" claims around here. And this isn't even the first one for a telescope. But this one is actually for the world's biggest optical telescope, and that somehow makes it easier to grasp the magnitude of. At a cost of 1.1 billion Euros, it doesn't come cheap, but the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has just been given the go ahead -- and truly lives up to its name. The mirror it uses will measure 39 meters across (four times that of typical mirrors,) comprising nearly 800 hexagonal pieces, and will swallow 12 times more light than the current biggest in existence. This, of course, means that it will be able to peep galaxies much farther away, and those in the process of formation in much more clarity. The project was approved by the European Southern Observatory council, which got the nod from ten countries in the continent, with others provisionally giving the thumbs up pending government backing. The telescope itself, however, will be located atop Chile's Cerro Armazones mountain in the Atacama Desert once completed.
NASA gets two 'Hubble-class' military telescopes, fist-pumps with joy
Imagine all you wanted for Christmas was a telescope. As you frantically peel off layer after layer of wrapping, there it is -- your brother's old one. Well, okay, if your brother was the National Reconnaissance Office (and you were NASA) this might not seem quite as unjust. Thankfully so, as that's effectively what's just happened. The NRO has given NASA two 2.4-meter "space qualified" telescopes and satellite casings for it to play with. The gifts -- which can observe about 100 times the area of the Hubble telescope -- could complement existing projects and provide much-needed resources at the space agency. As there is currently no funded mission for them, however, they'll remain firmly on the ground for now, but at least this implies they're not needed elsewhere -- hinting at improved international relations. Unless the NRO just got an upgrade?
Hubble reveals unavoidable collision between our galaxy and Andromeda
The Hubble team over at NASA has confirmed what it's suspected for a while: that our galaxy is destined for a direct collision / love fest with Andromeda, culminating in the birth of "Milkomeda." But don't go lobbying Virgin Galactic for ring-side tickets just yet because the fireworks won't go off for another four billion years -- and last another two billion after that. Scientists also predict that the earth won't be threatened thanks to the sheer amount of empty space between stars, but we could lose the sun as its flung out to some other part of the new system. You hear that? We could lose the freakin' sun!!
