Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

I suspect old croc is being sarcastic but would like to know for sure.

[oink]

I think assuming sarcasm would be a very safe assumption to make.

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.

[Old Croc]

oink is very perceptive.

[TomK]

Thanks, old croc, I think you should definitely think about posting on April 1st next year. I might be on vacation...

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

objects entering our solar system

Old Croc,
The initial radio scans of Oumuamua (first discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Maui in October), are in, but no signs of intelligent life... yet. Radio astronomers have more data to look through however.

I didn't expect radio astronomers would detect any signals, not because the odd shape of Oumuamua may turn out to be nothing more than an unusual shaped piece of rock, but because it is tumbling as it travels through our solar system. A habitable spacecraft would more likely display greater stability on it's course, an uninhabitied spacecraft as well if it was under control by it's makers or automatic navigation systems. Perhaps our best hope is hearing a weak distress signal, transmitted with the last of its remaining power.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...id/548390/

"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -James Madison, The Federalist Papers, 1787

[TomK]

As to the announcement about a new discovery by NASA, it didn't include any work by MK astronomers as far as I know. In fact, I thought it was quite uninteresting other than Google has found a way to discover a planet that is not very interesting. The technique is very interesting, the result isn't. Then again, just realizing we have solar systems that might be similar to our one is incredibly important to understanding our place in the universe.

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-discovery-...solar.html

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

As to the announcement about a new discovery by NASA... I thought it was quite uninteresting

I have to agree, it wasn't anything unexpectedly new, like the discovery of water on Mars, or geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. More like a new theme on previous exoplanet sightings. Certainly a valuable new method of discovery, and planetary system addition to known exoplanets, but I didn't think it warranted a two day teaser before the announcement.

Maybe we're getting spoiled.

"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -James Madison, The Federalist Papers, 1787

[TomK]

Recent news from the Keck Observatory

I'm sure this instrument will make some wonderful discoveries but this press release could be put into a star trek movie as a solution to get out of a spot of bother. I understand what they're saying, at least most of it, but at some point, you need to address the public and explain things in a way the layperson can understand. Let's just say I would have suggested some significant changes before this went out (including fewer acronyms):

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-keck-cosmi...apper.html

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

you need to address the public

They had me at:
The design for the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) includes two separate channels to detect light in the blue (350 to 560 nm) and the red (530 nm to 1050 nm)

But lost me completely with:
highly configurable and have superb sky-subtraction... probing ionization... hydrogen transition called Lyman Alpha

"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -James Madison, The Federalist Papers, 1787

[TomK]

I gave up at the point when they said:

"KCRM must be built to address the above questions[...]"

It's not a discovery, it's a proposal. I won't explain it now as the sky subtraction stuff is important but I don't know how they're doing that (sky subtraction is simply removing the effect of our own atmosphere from observations so atoms and molecules don't fool us into thinking they also exist in the object you're looking at).

"probing ionization" means they're looking for stuff in the early universe when things were so energetic they ionized all the hydrogen atoms which were pretty much most of the matter in the universe. At some point, as the universe expanded and cooled, re-ionization happened (all those electrons that were zapped from their atoms started to recombine as there was less energy around to zap them again).

Lyman alpha is simply an emission line that hydrogen emits. It's a very strong emission line and relatively easy to detect but its wavelength is in the UV. Due to an expanding universe and red-shift, Lyman-alpha emission gets shifted to red and infrared wavelengths. Because it's easy to identify, measuring that emission line is a very reliable method to measure the red-shift of a galaxy and therefore its distance.

I don't know if that makes things easier to understand but at least I know that most people on the planet have no idea what Lyman-alpha means.