It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
VIDEO: THE WAVE FRONT CORRECTION CONTEXT VIEWER CAMERA AT THE NSF'S INOUYE SOLAR TELESCOPE RECORDED THIS MOVIE OF A SUNSPOT ON JAN. 28, 2020. THE 2000 BY 2000-PIXEL CAMERA CAPTURED THIS... view more
CREDIT: NSF/NSO/AURA
The world's largest solar observatory, the U.S. National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, just released its first image of a sunspot. Although the telescope is still in the final phases of completion, the image is an indication of how the telescope's advanced optics and four-meter primary mirror will give scientists the best view of the Sun from Earth throughout the next solar cycle.
The image, taken January 28, 2020, is not the same naked eye sunspot currently visible on the Sun. This sunspot image accompanies a new paper by Dr. Thomas Rimmele and his team. Rimmele is the associate director at NSF's National Solar Observatory (NSO), the organization responsible for building and operating the Inouye Solar Telescope. The paper is the first in a series of Inouye-related articles featured in Solar Physics. The paper details the optics, mechanical systems, instruments, operational plans and scientific objectives of the Inouye Solar Telescope. Solar Physics will publish the remaining papers in early 2021.
"The sunspot image achieves a spatial resolution about 2.5 times higher than ever previously achieved, showing magnetic structures as small as 20 kilometers on the surface of the sun," said Rimmele.
The image reveals striking details of the sunspot's structure as seen at the Sun's surface. The streaky appearance of hot and cool gas spidering out from the darker center is the result of sculpting by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gasses boiling up from below.
The concentration of magnetic fields in this dark region suppresses heat within the Sun from reaching the surface. Although the dark area of the sunspot is cooler than the surrounding area of the Sun, it is still extremely hot with a temperature of more than 7,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
This sunspot image, measuring about 10,000 miles across, is just a tiny part of the Sun. However, the sunspot is large enough that Earth could comfortably fit inside.
CAPTION
This is the first sunspot image taken on Jan. 28, 2020, by the NSF's Inouye Solar Telescope's Wave Front Correction context viewer. The image reveals striking details of the sunspot's structure as seen at the sun's surface. The sunspot is sculpted by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gas boiling up from below. This image uses a warm palette of red and orange, but the context viewer took this sunspot image at the wavelength of 530 nanometers -- in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum. This is not the same naked eye sunspot group visible on the sun in late November and early December 2020.
CREDIT
NSO/AURA/NSF
Sunspots are the most visible representation of solar activity. Scientists know that the more sunspots that are visible on the Sun, the more active the Sun is. The Sun reached solar minimum, the time of fewest sunspots during its 11-year solar cycle, in December 2019. This sunspot was one of the first of the new solar cycle. Solar maximum for the current solar cycle is predicted in mid-2025.
"With this solar cycle just beginning, we also enter the era of the Inouye Solar Telescope," says Dr. Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), the organization that manages NSO and the Inouye Solar Telescope. "We can now point the world's most advanced solar telescope at the Sun to capture and share incredibly detailed images and add to our scientific insights about the Sun's activity."
Sunspots, and associated solar flares and coronal mass ejections, cause many space weather events, which frequently impact the Earth, a consequence of living inside the extended atmosphere of a star. These events affect technological life on Earth. The magnetic fields associated with solar storms can impact power grids, communications, GPS navigation, air travel, satellites and humans living in space. The Inouye Solar Telescope is poised to add important capabilities to the complement of tools optimized to study solar activity particularly magnetic fields.
NSF's Inouye Solar Telescope is located on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Construction began in 2013 and is slated to be completed in 2021.
"While the start of telescope operations has been slightly delayed due to the impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic," said Dr. David Boboltz, NSF Program Director for the Inouye Solar Telescope, "this image represents an early preview of the unprecedented capabilities that the facility will bring to bear on our understanding of the Sun."
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated by the National Solar Observatory under a cooperative agreement with the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. The Inouye Solar Telescope is located on land of spiritual and cultural significance to Native Hawaiian people. The use of this important site to further scientific knowledge is done so with appreciation and respect.
CAPTION
The National Science Foundation's Inouye Solar Telescope.
CREDIT
NSF/NSO/AURA
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Image Use:
The images and movies shown here are part of the facility Science Verification Phase. They are for the sole purpose of promotion and are not released for scientific use. Science Verification Phase data is proprietary to the Inouye Solar Telescope project, and its use for publications or outreach purposes requires approval by the NSO Director, and notification to the cognizant NSF program officer. Please contact outreach@nso.edu for details and questions. The original data are still being processed and are not fully calibrated for scientific use. Images have been processed to remove noise and enhance the visibility (contrast) of small-scale (magnetic) features while maintaining their shape. The movie frames have been smoothed to remove noise.
This product is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). For image use conditions, please visit our image use page or email outreach@nso.edu.
Contacts:
Claire Raftery Head of Communications National Solar Observatory 303-735-9044 claire@nso.edu National Science Foundation media@nsf.gov
Monday, September 04, 2023
Hackers force shutdown of 2 of the world’s most advanced telescopes
By Karen Graham September 2, 2023 The Gemini North telescope with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in the background near the summit of Maunakea in Hawai‘i.
Credit - International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/ T. Slovinský. (CC BY 4.0)
Operations at both the North and South Gemini telescopes have been temporarily suspended following a cybersecurity incident.
As detailed in a statement from the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) on August 24, 2023, the computer hack took place on the morning of August 1, and led to the suspension of the Gemini North and South Telescope.
“Our staff are working with cybersecurity experts to get all the impacted telescopes and our website back online as soon as possible and are encouraged by the progress made thus far,” NOIRLab wrote in the statement.
The Gemini North telescope is in Hawaii and the smaller Gemini South telescope is located in Cerro Pachón, according to Live Science. Other, smaller telescopes on Cerro Tololo in Chile were also affected.
Together, the two telescopes can access nearly the entire sky. The pair of telescopes have helped astronomers view an array of celestial events, including the births of supernovae. In 2022, researchers using Gemini North made observations of the closest-known black hole to Earth.
In a fantastically planned shot of the Moon, this image of Gemini South was timed to capture an almost perfectly full Moon framing the telescope
Credit – International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Rutten. CC SA 4.0.;
It’s unclear exactly what the nature of the cyberattacks was or from where they originated. NOIRLab points out that because the investigation is still ongoing, the organization will be cautious about what information it shares about the intrusions. However, the shutdown has been disruptive to scientists who rely on the telescopes for research projects.
“When people are like, ‘Oh, where’s the data?’ Then I’ll have to say, ‘Well, I don’t have any data, because a hacker somewhere took down the computer,’” Luis Welbanks, an astronomy researcher at Arizona State University, tells Science. “I don’t know if any hiring committee will be sympathetic to that.”
Research institutions face unique security challenges because of their open and collaborative nature, per Science. But observatory staff have been “working around the clock to get the telescopes back into the sky,” a NOIRLab spokesperson tells the publication.
Sadly, this latest cyberattack is not the first time that astronomical observatories have been the target of hackers. In Oct. 2022, hackers disrupted operations at the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile.
NASA has been the victim of cyberattacks for years. In 2021, the agency was affected by the worldwide SolarWinds breach that NASA leadership called a “big wakeup call” for cybersecurity.
As to who is responsible for the hacks, or their motivations, that remains either unknown or undisclosed. NOIRLab has been tight-lipped about the incident, claiming that it is “limited” in what it can share about its “cybersecurity controls and investigatory findings.”
Sunday, June 04, 2023
New images from solar telescope showcase sun's surface in unprecedented detail
A mosaic of new and unprecedented solar images was captured by the Inouye Solar Telescope during its first year of operations.—NSF/AURA/NSO
Newly released images of the sun's surface, obtained using the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, provide an unprecedented level of detail, showcasing sunspots and other features. Located on the island of Maui in Hawaii, this powerful 4-meter (13.1-foot) telescope has captured eight remarkable images that offer a unique perspective of the solar surface.
Despite the sun's increasing activity as it approaches the solar maximum in July 2025, which marks the peak of its 11-year cycle, the released photos focus on the quieter aspects of the sun's surface.
Dots and filaments glow within and around a sunspot.—NSF/AURA/NSO
The images highlight the presence of cool, dark sunspots on the photosphere, the sun's surface region with a strong magnetic field. These sunspots can be as large as or even bigger than the Earth and are associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can affect satellite-based communications on Earth.
The contrasting sunspot regions captured in the images display bright hot plasma flowing upward, while darker and cooler plasma flows downward. In the chromosphere, the atmospheric layer above the surface, threadlike structures indicate the presence of magnetic fields.
The images also reveal fine, detailed structures within the dark sunspots, including glowing dots where the magnetic field is strongest. Surrounding the sunspot, there are penumbral filaments derived from the magnetic field that transport heat.
The telescope captured an image of what scientists believe shows a decaying sunspot.—NSF/AURA/NSO
One of the images displays a sunspot in a decaying state, as it has lost most of its brighter surrounding region or penumbra. Scientists believe that the remaining fragments could represent the final stage of a sunspot's evolution before it vanishes.
The Inouye Solar Telescope has also captured "light bridges," which are bright solar features spanning the darkest region of a sunspot. These complex structures, with varying appearances, may indicate the imminent decay of a sunspot. Further observations will contribute to a better understanding of light bridge formation and its significance.
These images were obtained during the commissioning phase of the Inouye Solar Telescope, making them among the first observations using this ground-based solar telescope. The telescope is currently undergoing further enhancement to achieve its full operational capabilities.
Scientists have high hopes that the telescope's advanced capabilities will provide answers to crucial questions about the sun, such as the origins of solar storms and the complexities of its magnetic field. By enabling observations three times more detailed than other observatories, the Inouye Solar Telescope, in conjunction with space-based missions like Solar Orbiter and the Parker Solar Probe, aims to unravel long-standing mysteries surrounding our star while offering breathtaking views in a new light.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
The sun looks like caramel corn in highest-resolution image ever of our star By Nola Taylor Redd - Live Science CLICK HERE TO READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE WITH VIDEOS AND LINKS The world's largest solar telescope has revealed its first detailed image of the sun. The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), the world's largest solar telescope, captured its first image of the sun — the highest-resolution image of our star to date — last month. The image begins what scientists hope will be a nearly 50-year study of the Earth's most important star. The new images reveal small magnetic structures in incredible detail. As construction on the 4-meter telescope winds down on the peak of Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui, more of the telescope's instruments will begin to come online, increasing its ability to shed light on the active sun. Inouye's unique resolution and sensitivity will allow it to probe the sun's magnetic field for the very first time as it studies the activities that drive space weather in Earth's neighborhood. Charged particles shed from the sun can interfere with Earth's mechanical satellites, power grids and communication infrastructure. The new telescope will also delve into one of the most counterintuitive solar mysteries: why the sun's corona, or outer layer, is hotter than its visible surface. "These are the highest-resolution images and movies of the solar surface ever taken," Inouye director Thomas Rimmele said during a news conference on Friday (Jan. 24). "Up to now, we've just seen the tip of the iceberg."
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope's first published image of the sun is the highest-resolution image of our star to date. (Image credit: NSO/NSF/AURA) "A Swiss Army Knife" Construction began on the Inouye Solar Telescope in 2012. Since then, the telescope has remained on budget and on schedule, according to Dave Boboltz, the program director for the National Science Foundation Astronomy Division. The telescope captured the newly released image, which is its first engineering image, on Dec. 10, 2019, but the observatory is not yet complete. Only a single instrument, the Visible Broadband Imager (VBI), was operational at that time. The VBI takes extremely high-resolution images of the solar surface and lower atmosphere. The observatory's second instrument, the Visible Spectro-polarimeter (VISP), began operation on Thursday (Jan. 23). Like a prism, VISP splits light into its component colors to provide precise measurements of its characteristics along multiple wavelengths. The remaining instruments will be turned on as construction continues on the 13-story building, with full operations planned to begin in July 2020. "We're now in the final sprint of a very long marathon," Rimmele said. The first light-images captured are a false color image of the sun. Because the building is still under construction, the images were only processed but not analyzed for scientific results. However, Rimmele said that the magnetic structures that previously appeared in solar images as single bright points are now visible as several smaller structures, providing a hint the new solar telescope's capabilities. The next instrument that will be delivered to the summit will be the Cryogenic Near Infrared Spectra-Polarimeter, which will study the solar atmosphere at infrared wavelengths, in order to probe magnetic fields in the sun's corona over a large field of view. Soon after, the Diffraction Limited Near Infrared Spectrom-Polarimeter will arrive, eventually using optical fibers to collect spectral data at every point in a two-dimensional solar image, allowing it to simultaneously measure spatial and spectral information. The final instrument, the Visible Tunable Filter, will capture very high-resolution images of the sun while performing high speed scans of the light that can identify atoms and molecules. Inouye is meant to operate for 44 years, which should cover two of the sun's full 22-year solar cycles. Its suite of instruments will likely change over time. "The real power in the Inouye Solar Telescope is its flexibility, its upgradability," Boboltz said. "It's like having a Swiss Army Knife to study the sun."
A close-up of the solar telescope's first published image. (Image credit: NSO/NSF/AURA)
Solar solver The sun constantly sheds material into space in all directions. This ongoing solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, causing the auroras. Other outbursts are more dramatic. Occasionally, the sun will spit out large chunks of plasma and particles known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs); if these reach Earth, they can affect satellites and power grids, with the most powerful causing blackouts. One of the best-known modern catastrophes occurred in 1989 when a geomagnetic storm hit Quebec, sparking a nine-hour blackout across the Canadian territory. Studies have set the cost of a widespread blackout from tens of billions to trillions of dollars, depending on the circumstances. Such effects could become more severe. "Our expanding dependence on technology greatly increases our vulnerability to space weather," Boboltz said. The effects can be small but devastating. In September 2017, as a trio of hurricanes advanced across the Caribbean, solar flares caused multiple radio blackouts on the sunlit side of Earth. Multiple radio blackouts halted communications during the dangerous time, sometimes for as long as 8 hours. "A naturally occurring event on Earth and a naturally event on the sun, when combined, represent a much bigger threat to our society," National Science Foundation Director Valentin Pillet said during the news conference.
An infographic shows the scale of the features captured in the newly released image. (Image credit: NSO/NSF/AURA) The Inouye telescope should allow astronomers to learn more about what drives space weather. This understanding may help speed predictions for the most extreme events, allowing a faster response during dangerous situations. Inouye will not act alone to accomplish this. "To really understand the drivers and the impact of space weather, we need to use two complementary approaches," Pillet said. Inouye will handle the first, making in-depth observations of the magnetic surface of the sun. The second approach requires sending spacecraft close to the sun. NASA's Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 and will get within 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) at its closest approach to the star. In February, NASA and the European Space Agency will launch the Solar Orbiter, a mission dedicated to studying the sun's heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles blown into space by the solar wind. The trio are "very complementary in different ways," Pillet said. While Inouye will provide a detailed look at the sun's magnetic field, the space missions will place its observations in context with solar activity and solar weather. Together, "they will be at the forefront of discovery for the next half century," Pillet said. "It really is a great time to be a solar astronomer," he said. "House of the sun" Haleakala, Hawaiian for "House of the Sun," seems like the ideal setting for a solar telescope. World famous for its spectacular sunrises, the dormant volcano receives about 15 minutes more daylight than the sea-level portion of the island of Maui. According to Hawaiian tradition, the volcano took its name from a trick played on the sun by the demi-god Maui. Maui's mother complained that the sun sped across the sky so fast that her cloth could not dry. The trickster climbed to the top of the mountain and lassoed the sun, refusing to release it until the sun agreed to slow down. To secure his release, the sun agreed to travel more slowly for six months of the year. The spiritual significance of Hawaiian peaks has wreaked havoc for other telescopes. Protests about the growing astronomical presence on Mauna Kea have halted construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope. Inouye didn't escape opposition. In 2015 and 2017, hundreds of protesters gathered to block construction vehicles from traveling to the top of the peak. Since then, the telescope's officials have met twice a year with a working group of native Hawaiians, whom they intend to bring to see the finished telescope. A new Science Support Center was also built at the base of the mountain to provide off-site support, and the peak remains open to native Hawaiians who wish to practice their religion on its slopes. The National Solar Observatory has also put together a set of lesson plans for middle school teachers that highlight Hawaii's long history of astronomy that was presented to local teachers in 2019. "We've been able to smooth over a lot of that contention," Boboltz said. A million geysers of plasma spout from the sun, and scientists may finally know why NASA eyes missions to track space weather threats with small satellites See the sun flip out in wild new satellite view
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Saturday, April 15, 2023
SPACE NEWS
Giant Galaxy Seen in 3D by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory
IMAGE: A PHOTO OF THE HUGE ELLIPTICAL GALAXY M87 [LEFT] IS COMPARED TO ITS THREE-DIMENSIONAL SHAPE AS GLEANED FROM METICULOUS OBSERVATIONS MADE WITH THE HUBBLE AND KECK TELESCOPES [RIGHT]. BECAUSE THE GALAXY IS TOO FAR AWAY FOR ASTRONOMERS TO EMPLOY STEREOSCOPIC VISION, THEY INSTEAD FOLLOWED THE MOTION OF STARS AROUND THE CENTER OF M87, LIKE BEES AROUND A HIVE. THIS CREATED A THREE-DIMENSIONAL VIEW OF HOW STARS ARE DISTRIBUTED WITHIN THE GALAXY.view more
CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION: NASA, ESA, JOSEPH OLMSTED (STSCI), FRANK SUMMERS (STSCI) SCIENCE: CHUNG-PEI MA (UC BERKELEY)
Though we live in a vast three-dimensional universe, celestial objects seen through a telescope look flat because everything is so far away. Now for the first time, astronomers have measured the three-dimensional shape of one of the biggest and closest elliptical galaxies to us, M87. This galaxy turns out to be "triaxial," or potato-shaped. This stereo vision was made possible by combining the power of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii.
In most cases, astronomers must use their intuition to figure out the true shapes of deep-space objects. For example, the whole class of huge galaxies called "ellipticals" look like blobs in pictures. Determining the true shape of giant elliptical galaxies will help astronomers understand better how large galaxies and their central large black holes form.
Scientists made the 3D plot by measuring the motions of stars that swarm around the galaxy's supermassive central black hole. The stellar motion was used to provide new insights into the shape of the galaxy and its rotation, and it also yielded a new measurement of the black hole's mass. Tracking the stellar speeds and position allowed researchers to build a three-dimensional view of the galaxy.
Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, were able to determine the mass of the black hole at the galaxy's core to a high precision, estimating it at 5.4 billion times the mass of the Sun. Hubble observations in 1995 first measured the M87 black hole as being 2.4 billion solar masses, which astronomers deduced by clocking the speed of the gas swirling around the black hole. When the Event Horizon Telescope, an international collaboration of ground-based telescopes, released the first-ever image of the same black hole in 2019, the size of its pitch-black event horizon allowed researchers to calculate a mass of 6.5 billion solar masses using Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The stereo model of M87 and the more precise mass of the central black hole could help astrophysicists learn the black hole's spin rate. "Now that we know the direction of the net rotation of stars in M87 and have an updated mass of the black hole, we can combine this information with data from the Event Horizon Telescope to constrain the spin," said Chung-Pei Ma, a UC Berkeley lead investigator on the research.
Over ten times the mass of the Milky Way, M87 probably grew from the merger of many other galaxies. That's likely the reason M87's central black hole is so large – it assimilated the central black holes of one or more galaxies it swallowed.
Ma, together with UC Berkeley graduate student Emily Liepold (lead author on the paper published in theAstrophysical Journal Letters) and Jonelle Walsh at Texas A&M University were able to determine the 3D shape of M87 thanks to a new precision instrument mounted on the Keck II Telescope. They pointed Keck at 62 adjacent locations of the galaxy, mapping out the spectra of stars over a region about 70,000 light-years across. This region spans the central 3,000 light-years where gravity is largely dominated by the supermassive black hole. Though the telescope cannot resolve individual stars because of M87's great distance, the spectra can reveal the range of velocities to calculate mass of the object they're orbiting.
"It's sort of like looking at a swarm of 100 billion bees," said Ma. "Though we are looking at them from a distance and can't discern individual bees, we are getting very detailed information about their collective velocities."
The researchers took the data between 2020 and 2022, as well as earlier star brightness measurements of M87 from Hubble, and compared them to computer model predictions of how stars move around the center of the triaxial-shaped galaxy. The best fit to this data allowed them to calculate the black hole's mass. "Knowing the 3D shape of the 'swarming bees' enabled us to obtain a more robust dynamical measurement of the mass of the central black hole that is governing the bees' orbiting velocities," said Ma.
In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble first classified galaxies according to their shapes. Flat disk spiral galaxies could be viewed from various projection angles of the sky: face-on, oblique, or edge-on. But the "blobby-looking" galaxies were more problematic to characterize. Hubble came up with the term elliptical. They could only be sorted out by how great the ellipticity was. They didn't have any apparent dust or gas inside of them for better distinguishing between them. Now, a century later astronomers have a stereoscopic look at a prototypical elliptical galaxy.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble and Webb science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
IMAGE: THE HERA RADIO TELESCOPE, LOCATED IN KAROO IN SOUTH AFRICA, CONSISTS OF 350 DISHES POINTED UPWARD TO DETECT RADIO WAVES FROM THE EARLY UNIVERSE.view more
CREDIT: DARA STORER
An array of 350 radio telescopes in the Karoo desert of South Africa is getting closer to detecting the “cosmic dawn” — the era after the Big Bang when stars first ignited and galaxies began to bloom.
A team of scientists from across North America, Europe, and South Africa has doubled the sensitivity of a radio telescope called the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA). With this breakthrough, they hope to peer into the secrets of the early universe.
“Over the last couple of decades, teams from around the world have worked towards a first detection of radio waves from the cosmic dawn. While such a detection remains elusive, HERA’s results represent the most precise pursuit to date,” says Adrian Liu, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics and the Trottier Space Institute at McGill University.
The array was already the most sensitive radio telescope in the world dedicated to exploring the cosmic dawn. Now the HERA team has improved its sensitivity by a factor of 2.1 for radio waves emitted about 650 million years after the Big Bang and 2.6 for radio waves emitted about 450 million years after the Big Bang. Their work is described in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Although the scientists have yet to detect radio emissions from the end of the cosmic dark ages, their results provide clues about the composition of stars and galaxies in the early universe. So far, their data suggest that early galaxies contained very few elements besides hydrogen and helium, unlike our galaxies today. Today’s stars, have a variety of elements, ranging from lithium to uranium, that are heavier than helium.
Ruling out some theories
When the radio dishes are fully online and calibrated, the team hopes to construct a 3D map of the bubbles of ionized and neutral hydrogen – markers for early galaxies – as they evolved from about 200 million years to around 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The map could tell us how early stars and galaxies differed from those we see around us today, and how the universe looked in its adolescence, say the researchers.
According to the researchers, the fact that the HERA team has not yet detected these signals rules out some theories of how stars evolved in the early universe. “Our data suggest that early galaxies were about 100 times more luminous in X-rays than today’s galaxies. The lore was that this would be the case, but now we have actual data that bolsters this hypothesis,” says Liu.
Waiting for a signal
The HERA team continues to improve the telescope’s calibration and data analysis in hopes of seeing those bubbles in the early universe. However, filtering out the local radio noise to see the signals from the early universe has not been easy. “If it’s Swiss cheese, the galaxies make the holes, and we’re looking for the cheese,” says David DeBoer, a research astronomer in University of California Berkeley’s Radio Astronomy Laboratory.
“HERA is continuing to improve and set better and better limits,” says Aaron Parsons, principal investigator for HERA and a University of California Berkeley Associate Professor of astronomy. “The fact that we’re able to keep pushing through, and we have new techniques that are continuing to bear fruit for our telescope, is great.”
The HERA collaboration is led by University of California Berkeley and includes scientists from across North America, Europe, and South Africa, with support in Canada from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies, and from the Trottier Space Institute at McGill University. The construction of the array is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, with key support from the government of South Africa and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).
IMAGE: A UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TWIN CITIES-LED TEAM LOOKED MORE THAN 13 BILLION YEARS INTO THE PAST TO DISCOVER A UNIQUE, MINUSCULE GALAXY THAT COULD HELP ASTRONOMERS LEARN MORE ABOUT GALAXIES THAT WERE PRESENT SHORTLY AFTER THE BIG BANG.view more
CREDIT: ESA/WEBB, NASA & CSA, P. KELLY
Using first-of-their-kind observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, a University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team looked more than 13 billion years into the past to discover a unique, minuscule galaxy that generated new stars at an extremely high rate for its size. The galaxy is one of the smallest ever discovered at this distance—around 500 million years after the Big Bang—and could help astronomers learn more about galaxies that were present shortly after the Universe came into existence.
The paper is published in Science, one of the world's top peer-reviewed academic journals.
The University of Minnesota researchers were one of the first teams to study a distant galaxy using the James Webb Space Telescope, and their findings will be among the first ever published.
“This galaxy is far beyond the reach of all telescopes except the James Webb, and these first-of-their-kind observations of the distant galaxy are spectacular,” said Patrick Kelly, senior author of the paper and an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy. “Here, we’re able to see most of the way back to the Big Bang, and we've never looked at galaxies when the universe was this young in this level of detail. The galaxy’s volume is roughly a millionth of the Milky Way’s, but we can see that it’s still forming the same numbers of stars each year.”
The James Webb telescope can observe a wide enough field to image an entire galaxy cluster at once. The researchers were able to find and study this new, tiny galaxy because of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing—where mass, such as that in a galaxy or galaxy cluster, bends and magnifies light. A galaxy cluster lens caused this small background galaxy to appear 20 times brighter than it would if the cluster were not magnifying its light.
The researchers then used spectroscopy to measure how far away the galaxy was, in addition to some of its physical and chemical properties. Studying galaxies that were present when the Universe was this much younger can help scientists get closer to answering a huge question in astronomy regarding how the Universe became reionized.
“The galaxies that existed when the Universe was in its infancy are very different from what we see in the nearby Universe now,” explained Hayley Williams, first author on the paper and a Ph.D. student at the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics. “This discovery can help us learn more about the characteristics of those first galaxies, how they differ from nearby galaxies, and how the earlier galaxies formed.”
The James Webb telescope can collect about 10 times as much light as the Hubble Space Telescope and is much more sensitive at redder, longer wavelengths in the infrared spectrum. This allows scientists to access an entirely new window of data, the researchers said.
“The James Webb Space Telescope has this amazing capability to see extremely far into the universe,” Williams said. “This is one of the most exciting things about this paper. We're seeing things that previous telescopes would have ever been able to capture. It’s basically getting a snapshot of our universe in the first 500 million years of its life.”
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA through the Space Telescope Science Institute, with additional funding from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation and the Spanish State Research Agency.
In addition to Williams and Kelly, the research team included University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy postdoctoral researcher Wenlei Chen, Professor Claudia Scarlata, Ph.D. student Yu-Heng Lin, and graduate student Noah Rogers; University of Copenhagen researchers Gabriel Brammer, Jens Hjorth, and Danial Langeroodi; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Associate Professor Adi Zitrin; University of California Los Angeles faculty member Tomasso Treu; Space Telescope Science Institute researchers Anton Koekemoer, Lou Strolger, and Justin Pierel; Chiba University faculty member Masamune Oguri; University of Cantebria researcher Jose Diego; Astronomical Observatory of Trieste researcher Mario Nonino; University of the Basque Country Professor Tom Broadhurst; University of La Laguna researchers Ismael Perez-Fournon and Frederick Poidevin; University of California Santa Cruz Assistant Professor Ryan Foley; Rutgers University Professor Saurabh Jha; University of California Berkeley Professor Alexei Filippenko; and University of Tokyo postdoctoral researcher Lilan Yang.
JOURNAL
Science
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Observational study
ARTICLE TITLE
A magnified compact galaxy at redshift 9.51 with strong nebular emission lines
CREDIT: ESA/STFC RAL SPACE/UCL/UK SPACE AGENCY/ ATG MEDIALAB
Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts have been challenged to help a new space mission to investigate Earth’s place in the universe.
The Ariel Data Challenge 2023, which launches on 14 April, is inviting AI and machine learning experts from industry and academia to help astronomers understand planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.
Dr Ingo Waldmann, Associate Professor in Astrophysics, UCL (University College London) and Ariel Data Challenge lead said:
“AI has revolutionised many fields of science and industry in the past years. The field of exoplanets has fully arrived in the era of big-data and cutting edge AI is needed to break some of our biggest bottlenecks holding us back.”
Understanding our place in the universe
For centuries, astronomers could only glimpse the planets in our solar system but in recent years, thanks to telescopes in space, they have discovered more than 5000 planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy.
The European Space Agency’s Ariel telescope will complete one of the largest-ever surveys of these planets by observing the atmospheres of around one-fifth of the known exoplanets.
Due to the large number of planets in this survey, and the expected complexity of the captured observations, Ariel mission scientists are calling for the help of the AI and machine learning community to help interpret the data.
Ariel Data Challenge
Ariel will study the light from each exoplanet’s host star after it has travelled through the planet’s atmosphere in what is known as a spectrum. The information from these spectra can help scientists investigate the chemical makeup of the planet’s atmosphere and discover more about these planets and how they formed.
Scientists involved in the Ariel mission need a new method to interpret these data. Advanced machine learning techniques could help them to understand the impact of different atmospheric phenomena on the observed spectrum.
The Ariel Data Challenge calls on the AI community to investigate solutions. The competition is open from 14 April to 18t June 2023.
Participants are free to use any model, algorithm, data pre-processing technique or other tools to provide a solution. They may submit as many solutions as they like and collaborations between teams are welcomed.
This year, the competition also offers participants access to High Powered Computing resources through DiRAC, part of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council’s computing facilities.
Kai Hou (Gordon) Yip, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL and Ariel Data Challenge Lead said:
“With the arrival of next-generation instrumentation, astronomers are struggling to keep up with the complexity and volume of incoming exo-planetary data. The ECML-PKDD data challenge 2023 provides an excellent platform to facilitate cross-disciplinary solutions with AI experts.”
The competition
Winners will be invited to present their solutions at the prestigious ECML conference. The top three winning teams will be receive sponsored tickets to ECML-PKDD in Turing or the cash equivalent.
Winners will also be invited to present their solutions to the Ariel consortium.
The UK Space Agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), European Research Council, UKRI Science and Technology Funding Council (STFC), European Space Agency and Europlanet Society support the competition.
For the first time, DiRAC is providing free access to GPU computing resources to selected participants. The application is open for all.
Previous competition
This is the fourth Ariel Machine Learning Data challenge following successful competitions in 2019, 2021 and 2022. The 2022 challenge welcomed 230 participating teams from across the world, including entrants from leading academic institutes and AI companies.
This challenge and its predecessor have taken a bite-sized aspect of a larger problem to help make exoplanet research more accessible to the machine-learning community. These challenges are not designed to solve the data analysis issues faced by the mission outright but provide a forum for new ideas, discussions and to encourage future collaborations.
More details about the competition and how to take part can be found on the Ariel Data Challenge website. Follow @ArielTelescope for more updates.
Ariel will be placed in orbit around the Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a gravitational balance point 1.5 million kilometres beyond the Earth’s orbit around the Sun
IMAGE: INFRARED IMAGE OF HIP 99770 TAKEN BY THE SUBARU TELESCOPE. THE BRIGHT MAIN STAR AT THE POSITION MARKED WITH * IS HIDDEN. THE DASHED ELLIPSE SHOWS THE SIZE OF JUPITER’S ORBIT AROUND THE SUN FOR SCALE. THE ARROW POINTS TO THE DISCOVERED EXOPLANET HIP 99770 B.view more
CREDIT: T. CURRIE/SUBARU TELESCOPE, UTSA
An international team of astronomers announced the first exoplanet discovered through a combined approach of direct imaging and precision measurements of a star’s motion on the sky. This new method promises to improve the efficiency of exoplanet searches, paving the way for the discovery of an Earth twin.
To discover exoplanets, planets which orbit stars other than the Sun, by imaging astronomers have up until now used “blind surveys”: stars are selected for imaging consider factors such as age and distance but are otherwise unbiased. However, blind surveys find planets very infrequently. Knowing where to look would help increase detection rates.
An international research team led by Subaru Telescope, the University of Tokyo, the University of Texas-San Antonio, and the Astrobiology Center of Japan, searched for hints of unknown planets in the data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission and its predecessor, Hipparcos. The team identified a star, HIP 99770 located 133 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, whose motion suggests that an unseen planet is gravitationally pulling on it. Direct imaging observations with the Subaru Telescope detected the planet, HIP 99770 b.
The newly discovered planet is 14-16 times more massive than Jupiter. Its orbit is just over 3 times further from its star than Jupiter is from the Sun. The planet is 10 times hotter than Jupiter, with signs of water and carbon monoxide in its atmosphere.
A decade from now, astronomers hope to image a potentially-habitable planet with a size and temperature like the Earth using observatories like the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Compared with HIP 99770 b, this Earth twin will be smaller and closer to its star, traits that will make it harder to detect. But with precise motion measurements, researchers will know where to look in this game of planetary hide and seek.
