NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, has achieved a major milestone with the installation of the LSST Camera on the telescope. With the final optical component in place, Rubin enters the last phase of testing before capturing long-awaited and highly-anticipated First Look images, followed by the start of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).
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Using in part the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, astronomers have discovered four sub-Earth exoplanets orbiting Barnard’s Star, the nearest single star system to Earth. One of the planets is the least massive exoplanet ever discovered using the radial velocity technique, indicating a new benchmark for discovering smaller planets around nearby stars.
Within the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s early data, scientists have uncovered the largest samples ever of intermediate-mass black holes and dwarf galaxies hosting an active black hole, more than tripling the existing census of both. These large statistical samples will allow for more in-depth studies of the dynamics between dwarf galaxy evolution and black hole growth, and open up vast discovery potential surrounding the evolution of the Universe’s earliest black holes.
The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way appears to be having a party, complete with a disco ball-style light show. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astrophysicists has gained the longest, most detailed glimpse yet of the “void” that lurks in the middle of our galaxy.
From decades of astronomical observations scientists know that most galaxies contain massive black holes at their centers. The gas and dust falling into these black holes liberates an enormous amount of energy as a result of friction, forming luminous galactic cores, called quasars, that expel jets of energetic matter. These jets can be detected with radio telescopes up to large distances. In our local Universe these radio jets are not uncommon, with a small fraction being found in nearby galaxies, but they have remained elusive in the distant, early Universe until now.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye! The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow” — a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy — shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed a ninth using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Previous observations of other galaxies show a maximum of two or three rings.
In the years following the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the universe. But only one galaxy stands out as the most important nearby stellar island to our Milky Way — the magnificent Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31). It can be seen with the naked eye on a very clear autumn night as a faint cigar-shaped object roughly the apparent angular diameter of our Moon.
By combining data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and the Gemini South telescope, astronomers have investigated three ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that reside in a region of space isolated from the environmental influence of larger objects. The galaxies, located in the direction of NGC 300, were found to contain only very old stars, supporting the theory that events in the early Universe cut star formation short in the smallest galaxies.
After ten years of construction, NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is less than one year away from the start of its transformational movie of our changing night sky. In preparation for this monumental production, the observatory has just successfully completed a series of full-system tests using an engineering test camera. This accomplishment sets the stage for the last step of Rubin construction: installation of the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera (LSSTCam) — the largest digital camera in the world.
Once upon a time, the core of a massive star collapsed, creating a shockwave that blasted outward, ripping the star apart as it went. When the shockwave reached the star’s surface, it punched through, generating a brief, intense pulse of X-rays and ultraviolet light that traveled outward into the surrounding space. About 350 years later, that pulse of light has reached interstellar material, illuminating it, warming it, and causing it to glow in infrared light.
AURA, and the organizations behind Giant Magellan Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope, GMTO & TIO, acknowledge the findings of the U.S. ELT External Evaluation Panel Report, presented by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) on 8 December 2024.
For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected and “weighed” a galaxy that not only existed around 600 million years after the big bang, but is also similar to what our Milky Way galaxy’s mass might have been at the same stage of development. Other galaxies Webb has detected at this time period are significantly more massive. Nicknamed the Firefly Sparkle, this galaxy is gleaming with star clusters — 10 in all — each of which researchers examined in great detail.
In a new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a galaxy named for its resemblance to a broad-brimmed Mexican hat appears more like an archery target.
For four years the NEID (rhymes with fluid) spectrograph, mounted on the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab, has been delivering on one of its main science goals — to confirm exoplanet candidates from other exoplanet missions and characterize both newly confirmed and known planets.
Researchers have used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to map nearly six million galaxies across 11 billion years of cosmic history, allowing them to study how galaxies clustered throughout time and investigate the growth of the cosmic structure. This complex analysis of DESI’s first-year data provides one of the most stringent tests yet of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
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