Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

PS. I should add that some of the MK observatories observed 'Oumuamua
shortly after it was discovered and continue to do so: Gemini, Keck, CFHT and UKIRT, with the results published in "Nature" just today.

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Oumuamua/

[Rob Tucker]

In this article it is being described as the first interstellar object observed. It is named Oumaumau having been discovered by the Hawaiian observatory Pan-STARRS 1.

More here: http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/20/world/firs...index.html

[Obie]

How cool is this, an actual picture of the object.

http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2017/1...iian-name/

JK

[TomK]

Rob, yes, its orbit and extremely high velocity strongly suggest an interstellar origin. It could be a solar system object that had its orbit affected by Jupiter, but the high velocity, very similar to other stars in the solar neighborhood, strongly suggest it came from interstellar space. What's more interesting is that it seems to have passed through the solar system of another star before it got here, so it's well-traveled!

[PaulW]

Could it be this happens quite a lot, it's just the first time we've noticed it?

[TomK]

Obie - as I think you suggest, the images are not quite as good as on that video, sometimes artistic illustrations are used instead. Incidentally, Kelly Fast, who is interviewed on that Big Island Video News video, is the wonderful voice behind the infamous "Hotel Mauna Kea" video - https://youtu.be/XPdTlHK1h_0

Paul - yes, this should happen quite often, but it seems they are hard to detect. This one was *very* faint and only barely visible to even the major telescopes. Don't be surprised to see more in the future now we've had a go at detecting this one!

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

If no one else will say it, I guess I will.

Take a good look* at the recently discovered interstellar asteroid/comet. It has a highly unusual (for a space object) elongated shape, not formed into the more common round, oblong, or clumpy contours of a moon or solar system asteroid, it's more like an extruded piece of debris, frozen solid in the vast empty waste of space.

Is it possible, as some would ask, that a passing spacecraft of giant aliens spotted our earth from a distance? That they watched us for a while, and noted the way we treat each other, the way we use our home as a planetary dumping ground, garbage piled atop more garbage, atmospheric temperature rising every year, massive storms closing in around our population centers. Then the inhabitants of the mega-alien Winnebago RV reach a logical conclusion, and since they'd already been looking for a designated dumping station where they could empty their holding tanks shouted, "there! Three planets from that small sun, a real toilet bowl. See if you can hit a three pointer into that swirling hurricane. On my mark, 3,2,1... flush it!

* see links in posts above

“Facts fall from the poetic observer as ripe seeds.” -Henry Thoreau

[Lodestone]

I've seen this before. We're all doomed, UNLESS...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsQ3mm0Tm08

[TomK]

I forgot to mention that the MK observatories did use their powerful lasers during their observations which seems to have frightened the thing back off towards interstellar space.

[TomK]

Apologies for not updating this thread recently, sometimes life takes over...

Anyway, a couple of things caught my eye recently:

"Measuring the length of a day on exoplanets"

Not only has the number of exoplanets become extraordinary, what we're starting to learn about them is progressing at an ever-increasing rate. Now it seems we can even measure the length of a day on some of them despite being several light-years away, thanks to some recent research carried out using observations from the Keck on MK.

"The astronomers used the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii—which is managed by Caltech, the University of California, and NASA—to measure the spin rate, or the length of a day, of three planetary-mass companions known as ROXs 42B b, GSC 6214-210 b, and VHS 1256-1257 b. They used an instrument at Keck called the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) to dissect the light coming from the companions. As the objects spin on their axes, light from the side that is turning toward us shifts to shorter, bluer wavelengths, while light from the receding side shifts to longer, redder wavelengths. The degree of this shifting indicates the speed of a rotating body. The results showed that the three companions' spin rates ranged between 6 to 14 kilometers per second, similar to rotation rates of our solar system's gas giant planets Saturn and Jupiter."

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-bodies-tho...stars.html

In the meantime, what might have been thought a phenomenon specific to Earthlings may also be pissing off galaxies in a recent study by astronomers using the Gemini North observatory on MK.

"It seems like even black holes can’t resist the temptation to insert themselves unannounced into photographs. A cosmic photobomb found as a background object in images of the nearby Andromeda galaxy has revealed what could be the most tightly separated pair of supermassive black holes ever seen."

http://gemini.edu/node/12733