Giant Telescope to Start Watching Skies

[BABronco]

Giant Telescope to Start Watching Skies
By JUAN MANUEL PARDELLAS

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands (AP) - One of the world's most powerful telescopes will begin spying on the universe on Friday, using its 34-foot wide mirror to search for planets similar to our own from a mountaintop on one of Spain's Canary Islands.

Perched atop a 7,800 foot peak on the Atlantic island of La Palma, the Great Canary Telescope will receive its so-called ``first light'' - when the telescope is pointed toward the sky and focusses on the North Star - Friday night.

``The GTC will be able to reach the weakest and most distant celestial objects of the universe,'' the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute said in a statement.

``One of its aims is to find planets similar to ours in other solar systems,'' the institute added.

The telescope will have 36 hexagonal mirrors, of which 12 are already in place.

Once the telescope has had its first light, the remaining 24 mirrors will be placed and adjusted, and the scope will be fully functional within a year, according to the institute.

``With this (telescope) it will possible to capture the birth of new stars, to study more profoundly the characteristics of the black holes or to decipher the chemical components generated by the Big Bang,'' the institute said in a statement.

The telescope cost $143 million and seven years to construct. The Canary Island observatory said institutes in Mexico and the United States collaborated in the project, involving more than 1,000 people in nearly 100 companies.

Among those in La Palma for the inauguration was Brian May, lead guitarist of the legendary pop group Queen, who studied for some his doctorate in astrophysics at the Canary Island institute.

The Great Canary Telescope is among the world's largest telescopes. Others are the Southern African Large Telescope or Salt which has an 36-foot mirror and has been described the southern hemisphere's largest single optical telescope. Another one is the Hobby-Eberly on Mount Fowlkes, Texas, also has an 36-foot mirror.

The Canary institute is considered one of the most important in the world of astrophysics owing to the special geographical situation of the islands, which are off the northwest coast of Africa and have unusually transparent views of the sky.

[Spider]

ET phone home

[BABronco]

Astronomers Seek Aid For Galactic Census
Astronomers Ask For Volunteers To Help Classify Pictures Of About 1 Million Galaxies

LONDON, Jul. 11, 2007
(AP) Scientists want Internet users to help them sort through an unusual digital photo album: pictures of about 1 million galaxies. In a Web statement Wednesday, astronomers asked for volunteers to help classify the galaxies, identifying them as either elliptical or spiral, and noting, where possible, in which direction they rotate.

It would the largest galactic census ever compiled, something scientists say would provide new insight into the structure of the universe.

"We're in the golden era of astronomy," said Bob Nichol, an astronomer at the University of Portsmouth, in southern England, who helped develop the "Galaxy Zoo" Web site where the photographs are posted. "We have more data than we can assimilate, and we need help."

Astronomers say computer programs have been unable to reliably classify the star systems. Without volunteers, it would take researchers years to wade through the photographs, which were taken automatically by a massive digital camera mounted onto a telescope at the Apache Point Observatory near Sunspot, New Mexico, Nichol said. With 10,000 to 20,000 people working to classify the galaxies, the process could take as little as a month.

Volunteers would sign on to the Web site, complete a brief tutorial, and pick through one galaxy after another.

The galaxies would be identified by several people to guard against errors, and scientists would rule on galaxies whose shape or spin was disputed by volunteers.

The catalog would help researchers understand how galaxies interacted and the way in which they formed, Nichol said, explaining that scientists still knew very little about galaxies beyond the fact that some were spiral-shaped while others were elliptical.

"It's a bit of like knowing that there are men and women in the world, but not knowing where they come from or how they're different," he said.

If the volunteers' data showed that galaxies close to each other spun in the same direction, for example, it would suggest that they were formed at the same time from a common source, a potential challenge to the current understanding of how galaxies _ and the structure of the universe _ came to be.

"At some level, what we learn about these galaxies could tell us something quite fundamental about cosmology and particle physics," Nichol said.

The project was inspired by similar projects at NASA, such as Stardust(at)home, which enlisted the help of thousands of volunteers to sift through grains of space dust gathered during a 2006 mission. Another such program, SETI(at)home, taps volunteers' computer power to help scientists detect extraterrestrial radio signals.

Galaxy Zoo was developed by researchers from the University of Portsmouth and the University of Oxford in England, and Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n3047091.shtml

[Denver Crush]

Awesome story, thanks for sharing. Should be some interesting years ahead, if we survive to see it.

[TheReverend]

Congratulations to JUAN MANUEL PARDELLAS for writing the most obvious headline... ever.

[BABronco]

Originally Posted by TheReverend

Congratulations to JUAN MANUEL PARDELLAS for writing the most obvious headline... ever.

[PLOWHORSE]

Wow..Brian May has a doctorate in astrophysics!!

[Jason in LA]

I think we are better off not knowing what's out there. Wouldn't want any of those ETs with there supior technology coming over here because we're watching them.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by BABronco

``The GTC will be able to reach the weakest and most distant celestial objects of the universe,'' the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute said in a statement.

So how did someone determine where the "most distant celestial objects of the universe" are?

[Rock Chalk]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

So how did someone determine where the "most distant celestial objects of the universe" are?

Distant visible objects. It is mostly assumed the universe is only 14 billion years or so, and it is also assumed that for 700 million years or so the universe was dark and the cooling of the universe caused gasses to clump up which later turned to stars and galaxies. That dark age and things that far away (determined by the amount of red shift of the galaxy) is how to determine where the most distant celestial objects of the universe are...to the best of our knowledge (caveat).

[BABronco]

Originally Posted by Alec

Distant visible objects. It is mostly assumed the universe is only 14 billion years or so, and it is also assumed that for 700 million years or so the universe was dark and the cooling of the universe caused gasses to clump up which later turned to stars and galaxies. That dark age and things that far away (determined by the amount of red shift of the galaxy) is how to determine where the most distant celestial objects of the universe are...to the best of our knowledge (caveat).

ermm .. yeah what he said.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by Alec

Distant visible objects. It is mostly assumed the universe is only 14 billion years or so, and it is also assumed that for 700 million years or so the universe was dark and the cooling of the universe caused gasses to clump up which later turned to stars and galaxies. That dark age and things that far away (determined by the amount of red shift of the galaxy) is how to determine where the most distant celestial objects of the universe are...to the best of our knowledge (caveat).

Well, since infinity enters into this, I'd guess that those guesses are no better than my guess which is we could never really know where the most distant celestial objects of the universe are.

[broncosteven]

Originally Posted by Alec

Distant visible objects. It is mostly assumed the universe is only 14 billion years or so, and it is also assumed that for 700 million years or so the universe was dark and the cooling of the universe caused gasses to clump up which later turned to stars and galaxies. That dark age and things that far away (determined by the amount of red shift of the galaxy) is how to determine where the most distant celestial objects of the universe are...to the best of our knowledge (caveat).

Everyone knows the Baby Jesus made everything in 6 days & partied on the 7th!

Don't you read the bible?