Director, NSF National Solar Observatory Prior to his appointment as NSO Director, Dr. Keller was Director of Science at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He started at NSO as a postdoc and then was hired as an Associate Astronomer. During his tenure, Keller led efforts at the McMath-Pierce solar telescope; designed, developed, built, and commissioned SOLIS […]
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Project Manager for Rubin Construction Victor Krabbendam has been Project Manager for Rubin Construction since 2012, after eight years as Project Manager for the Rubin Observatory Telescope & Site subsystem. Trained as a mechanical engineer, Victor has worked in industry, government, and with major astronomical research facilities including the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory and […]
Using the Gemini South telescope a team of astronomers have confirmed for the first time that differences in binary stars’ composition can originate from chemical variations in the cloud of stellar material from which they formed. The results help explain why stars born from the same molecular cloud can possess different chemical composition and host different planetary systems, as well as pose challenges to current stellar and planet formation models.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of a zoomed-in portion of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show the top of the “horse’s mane” or edge of this iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing the region’s complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.
Deputy Director, NSF NOIRLab and AURA Mission Scientist in Chile Stuartt Corder has a strong history of leadership in astronomy with more than 15 years of experience in building, operating, and further developing groundbreaking, large-scale, advanced scientific and technical programs and facilities. Since receiving his PhD from Caltech, he has been in Chile, holding a number […]
Deputy Director and Telescope and Site Scientist, Rubin Observatory Construction Dr. Sandrine J. Thomas focuses on optimizing Rubin Observatory’s image quality and on a smooth transition to operation among other topics. Dr Thomas’ main expertise is in physical optics, active/adaptive optics and coronagraphy as well as fostering a healthy workplace culture. In addition to Rubin, […]
In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescopeon April 24, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Messier 76, M76, or NGC 650/651) located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus.
Lori Allen, Mid-Scale Observatories (MSO) Director at NSF NOIRLab, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. MSO encompasses both Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile and Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.
On March 11, 2024, researchers gathered in Tucson, Arizona for a workshop to discuss something new for astronomy: quantum-enabled optical interferometry. Being explored as the possible next step after building giant telescopes, this new capability could make it possible to combine the light from very widely separated telescopes so that they would function as one large collecting area. While radio telescopes like the VLA have exploited interferometry for decades, the challenges at optical wavelengths have been daunting.
This 3,200 megapixel instrument, built by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, will be brought to Chile soon to begin field testing, and then begin telescope operations in 2025.
The giant planet Jupiter, in all its banded glory, is revisited by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in these latest images, taken on January 5-6, 2024, capturing both sides of the planet. Hubble monitors Jupiter and the other outer solar system planets every year under the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program (OPAL). This is because these large worlds are shrouded in clouds and hazes stirred up by violent winds, causing a kaleidoscope of ever-changing weather patterns.
With the powerful, 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), astronomers have constructed a massive 1.3-gigapixel image showcasing the central part of the Vela Supernova Remnant, the cosmic corpse of a gigantic star that exploded as a supernova. DECam is one of the highest-performing wide-field imaging instruments in the world and is mounted on the US National Science Foundation’s Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab.
When you are trying to solve one of the biggest conundrums in cosmology, you should triple check your homework. The puzzle, called the “Hubble Tension,” is that the current rate of the expansion of the universe is faster than what astronomers expect it to be, based on the universe’s initial conditions and our present understanding of the universe’s evolution.
Using archival data from the Gemini North telescope, a team of astronomers have measured the heaviest pair of supermassive black holes ever found. The merging of two supermassive black holes is a phenomenon that has long been predicted, though never observed. This massive pair gives clues as to why such an event seems so unlikely in the Universe.
The second layer of our Sun’s atmosphere, the chromosphere, is sandwiched between the Sun’s visible surface (or photosphere) below, and its outer atmosphere (or corona) above. In this layer, plasma properties such as temperature, pressure, and magnetic field change dramatically, making it one of the most mysterious objects in astrophysics.
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