Discoveries by the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

First clouds discovered on an object outside our solar system:

Gemini press release: http://gemini.edu/node/12536

Daily Mail article: http://goo.gl/pPEcnc

The discovery was made using the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea. As someone very familiar with doing spectroscopy in the 4.5 to 5 micron region, I can't start explaining how difficult these observations were. You're dealing with our sky which is typically much brighter than the object you're observing, and any small change in the amount of water above the telescope creates noise that can be very hard to remove.

[PaulW]

Any water clouds on the other planets or moons in our system?
Amazing stuff. Could signs of life be detected in the same way, e.g. if someune used the same method to look at us?

[TomK]

Water vapor has been detected in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune. As for detecting life, yes an alien astronomer with the technology could detect water vapor and water ices (such as cirrus clouds) on earth. However, you would need a bit more than that to say life existed. What you would be able to deduce using the observations along with other information (e.g., earth's mass, density and temperature) is that earth is a suitable place for life.

[alaskyn66]

What are they going to be able to find with this new radio telescope in China.. now the largest in the world.

..And the people bowed and prayed... to the neon God they made...

[TomK]

Alaskyn - its main uses will be for mapping molecular hydrogen, detecting distant neutron stars, detecting complex molecules in space and for some of the time it may be used to search for radio signals from alien civilizations. It'll do a variety of other things as well, but mostly it'll be used for mapping and detecting molecules. Because it's so large, it'll be more sensitive than other radio telescopes, so will be able to observe objects fainter and farther away than those other dishes.

[TomK]

"The Australian radio telescope operating in tandem with the Arecibo radio telescope are seeing through this blocked view now, seeing stars and galaxies not visible to optical telescopes, with radio telescopes."

Will this require the use of radio telescopes by any chance?

[TomK]

All,

Thought I'd change the subject of this thread for a couple of reasons:

1) It's now a general thread which can be used to post about astronomical discoveries made by the observatories in Hawaii, rather than several mini-threads;

2) To try and limit things to discoveries made here and not elsewhere.

The latter is a little more difficult because astronomy is an international collaboration, but hoping it things will be mainly about Hawaii-based discoveries.

As an example, a new dwarf planet has been discovered by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Mauna Kea that's far beyond the orbit of Pluto:

http://goo.gl/p2Iy9Z

[Eric1600]

FYI alohapueo has been aggregating Hawaii specific science news too here

http://alohapueo.org/category/news/

[TomK]

Thank you, Eric1600, I wasn't aware of that site.

Just thinking of the number of peer-reviewed science papers published each year from observations made at the Mauna Kea observatories, there are something like three to five new discoveries made every night. Most will never make it into the mainstream media as they aren't the kind of discoveries that attract public attention. However, they are all new results that ultimately lead to greater discoveries and a better understanding of our universe and what we are a part of.

This is something I feel people in Hawaii should be proud of. I'm only guessing, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if you found that the Big Island has the greatest number of scientific discoveries per resident in the world.

[Eric1600]

I've noticed most papers are a little obscure about specific locations because they talk about data sets or facilities. You can poke around and find thousands though that mention mauna kea or facilities that are there.

The one-stop location to find papers (or at least the abstracts) in major astronomy publications:
http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/

Full papers too:
http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph