Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

"New Neptune Storm Appears in a Bizarre Location"

This discovery shows that sometimes you can't just plan and request observations on a major telescope for a particular astronomical event, sometimes you're just lucky. A massive storm on Neptune almost the size of the Earth was seen when doing some testing at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea. This storm is/was near Neptune's equator where no such storm has been seen before.

https://www.space.com/37704-neptune-stor...ation.html

[TomK]

"Astronomers release largest ever infrared sky survey"

There's a nice feeling of achievement amongst the small group of staff here. After a few years of hard work, UKIRT on MK has completed an infrared survey of the Northern sky. This was in the J-band (roughly a wavelength of 1.25 microns) which is a tough region to work in mainly because it's still at a short enough wavelength that twilight prevents observations because the sky is bright and also it is not the best wavelength to deliver the image quality required for the survey. But it's been completed.

Just in the last week or so, we've started doing the same survey, but this time in the K-band (about 2.2 microns). This should go faster as image quality is a little easier to achieve and the brightness of the sky is of less concern at longer wavelengths. Things started off really well in the first week but now we're dealing with thick cirrus which is frustrating, but that's the way things go, we have no control over that.

Anyway, I don't believe this is an official press release but has some info about the survey:

http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/news/2017/astrono...y-17-08-01

The first UHS paper describing the survey has been submitted for publication, but probably only worth reading if you want to get into technical details:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.09975

PS. The School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Nottingham also posted an article about the survey on their physics blog:

https://goo.gl/gZsvF6

[TomK]

"Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star"

More Earth-sized planets discovered, two of which are in the habitable zone where they could have liquid water on their surface. The Keck Observatory on MK was involved in this discovery.

https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/08/tau-ceti-planets.html

[PaulW]

Thanks Tom!

[TomK]

"Astronomers reveal new insights into physical properties of the young star system ROXs 12"

This is not a system with which I'm familiar, but it looks very interesting. In this case, it's a relatively nearby system (400 light years or about 2.4 million billion miles away!) that contains some very young objects, astronomically speaking. The system was observed using instruments on the Gemini and Keck I telescopes on MK.

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-astronomer...rties.html

"Located about 400 light years away from the Earth, ROXs 12 is a young system, known to be composed of two 6-million-year-old objects. The larger component, designated ROXs 12 A, is a star of spectral type M0, with a radius of 1.14 solar radii but about 35 percent less massive than the sun. ROXs 12 B is a much smaller substellar companion of ROXs 12 A, but very little is known about its physical parameters."

[...]

"In order to get more details about ROXs 12 and its mysterious companion, a team of researchers led by Brendan Bowler of the University of Texas at Austin has conducted moderate-resolution near-infrared spectroscopic observations of ROXs 12 B. For their observational campaign, the astronomers used several spectrographs, including the Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS) at Gemini-North 8.1 m telescope in Hawaii, and the OH-Suppressing InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph (OSIRIS) at the Keck I telescope, also in Hawaii."

OH-suppressing technology is relatively new and I was involved in a few related projects early in my career here. The upper atmosphere contains lots of OH- ions that emit several emission lines in the near infrared and also at optical wavelengths. The ions become excited by "gravity waves" in the upper atmosphere, essentially waves of turbulence, and the line strengths vary very quickly. This makes high-resolution spectroscopy observations difficult as they have to take into account the effects the lines have on the data. One of my very first projects after arriving in Hawaii was to produce a spectroscopic map of these lines between about one and 2.5 microns to allow astronomers to understand the data they were taking and are still used today. The project involved Tom Geballe, a few of here may well know him.

http://www.ukirt.hawaii.edu/astronomy/ca...lines.html

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Keck Observatory video of a successful missile intercept off Kauai last night:

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/36257...-night-sky

Ate you watching Kim Jong Un?

The Donner Party really wasn't that great of a party, was it?

[TomK]

Thanks, HOTPE, pretty stunning video! The Keck Observatory archives the Cloud Cam time-lapse videos, so if you want to see the event without having to deal all the extraneous stuff on the HNN site you can see it here:

http://www.keckobservatory.org/video

(click on August 30 to see it, it takes place at about the 13-second mark).

Can't wait for the fruitcakes to claim this confirms the observatories are involved in military operations.

[TomK]

"Hubble delivers first hints of possible water content of TRAPPIST-1 planets."

As some of you might remember, the TRAPPIST-1 system is so far unique in that it contains seven Earth-sized planets of which three lie in the habitable zone, i.e., the conditions there are likely suitable for liquid water which might mean they're habitable.

A recent study, which involved observations from UKIRT on MK, claims:

The inner planets could have lost more than 20 Earth-oceans-worth of water during the last eight billion years. However, the outer planets of the system – including the planets e, f and g which are in the habitable zone – should have lost much less water, suggesting that they could have retained some on their surfaces [3]. The calculated water loss rates as well as geophysical water release rates also favour the idea that the outermost, more massive planets retain their water. However, with the currently available data and telescopes no final conclusion can be drawn on the water content of the planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1.

http://sci.esa.int/hubble/59451-hubble-d...-heic1713/

As I write this, both UKIRT and the CFHT (also on Mauna Kea) are simultaneously observing a transit of the outermost planet in the system. Winds are high, which is making things a little tricky, but the sky is clear!

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

no final conclusion can be drawn on the water content of the planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1.

After UKIRT observes the transit, and If it shows there may be water on TRAPPIST-1, don't forget what some in Hawaii along the coast want to know... can you surf it?

The Donner Party really wasn't that great of a party, was it?

[TomK]

We'll do our best to let you know, but right now the technology isn't quite good enough to forecast surf conditions on exoplanets. It's on the list though.