Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

"So when and where is the protest?"

A protest about hydrogen emission lines? I have no idea when it will be held and doubt it will have any effect; protests tend to have no influence on the laws of physics.

[dan d]

https://amp.space.com/42130-blue-velvet-...video.html

Speaking of Hydrogen
ESO VLT

Showing huge fields hydrogen in the vicinity of galaxies in the Fornax cluster
It would make a nice poster.

Does anyone here on PW do any star viewing in puna?(when its not cloudy?) I used to go up and view at volcano at the kiluea turn off. I have a nice tracking mount and a 120 refractor ,big binocs and tripod etc,and would love to find someone nearby with similar
Interests. Im a whaco. How about u lolo?
Aloha


HPP

[TomK]

Future technique for imaging exoplanets tested at Subaru

Although thousands of exoplanets have been discovered by indirect methods (e.g., by transitions and the effects they have on the movement of their host stars), few exoplanets have been observed directly. This is mainly because they are outshone by their host stars and the resolution required to distinguish them from those stars is extremely difficult to achieve. However, a new method of enhanced adaptive optics algorithms has been developed and successfully tested at the Subaru Observatory on MK. This technique will allow future extremely large telescopes, such as the TMT, to directly image exoplanets and help determine the composition of their atmospheres, and perhaps even detect life.

https://www.astrobio.net/also-in-news/aw...ext-level/

"An international team of scientists, including KAUST high performance computing experts and astronomers from the Paris Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), in collaboration with NVIDIA, is taking the search for habitable planets and observation of first epoch galaxies to the next level.

An on-sky demonstration was recently achieved on NAOJ’s 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope, and the Paris Observatory’s team is already scaling up the algorithms for future larger telescopes. The KAUST Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC) is working with the astronomers to develop the advanced Extreme-AO algorithms that will meet the formidable habitable exoplanet imaging challenge."

[dan d]

http://www.space.com/images/i/000/080/20...w1840a.jpg


Hubbles new picture of ngc 1898 in the LMC Large Magalenic cloud.
Very pretty.

It looks like 1/3 of Hubbles gyros are broken now. Not good
Aloha


HPP

[TomK]

Dan - that's a gorgeous image of a globular cluster. As for the HST, it should be back in full operation shortly.

I enjoy your enthusiasm for the subject of astronomy, but might I suggest keeping it Mauna Kea and Hawaii related? I started the thread so there was a place people could read about the world-beating astronomical discoveries being made on the island which of course involves staff living in Puna but still followed the PW rules as it was related to Hawaii. Unfortunately, one or two crazies tried to shut down the thread because they claimed it wasn't Puna related. It was obvious that wasn't really the motive, but that's what they posted. I'd hate to give them extra ammunition in case they start up again.

Many thanks.

[dan d]

Gotcha. Trying to compete with andrew on" a darker view "is hard
So i will only post obs from the Mauna,as Andrew would correct me to say.
What do you expect from a WHACO ? ( west hawaii astronomy club)
Aloha


HPP

[TomK]

Thanks, Dan. Andrew and I know each other and often communicate on various issues. I used to blog frequently like Andrew (see the link in my profile) but after we switched to remote operations I lost enthusiasm for the blog. It was always meant to be about doing astronomy from Mauna Kea along with photos but it didn't work so well from the office in Hilo.

[dan d]

Hes been an excellent president of the whaco club,and a good friend as well. I once rode up to the summit with him,talk about a wild ride. Hes a mavik air pro now,fun.
Aloha


HPP

[TomK]

What stops stars from forming in galaxy clusters?

A long-term mystery may have been solved. It's been known for some time that normal galaxies stopped forming stars in the early universe when they fell under the gravitational influence of galaxy clusters but we've never figured out why this is the case. A new study, using the Keck and Gemini observatories on Mauna Kea, suggest the reason is due to hot gas, heated by the stars in the cluster, stripping away the cold dust and gas that's needed to fuel the star-formation process.

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-insight-ga...stars.html

"Using some of their own newly discovered SpARCS clusters, the new UCR-led study discovered that it takes a galaxy longer to stop forming stars as the universe gets older: only 1.1 billion years when the universe was young (4 billion years old), 1.3 billion years when the universe is middle-aged (6 billion years old), and 5 billion years in the present-day universe.

"Comparing observations of the quenching timescale in galaxies in clusters in the distant universe to those in the nearby universe revealed that a dynamical process such as gas stripping is a better fit to the predictions than strangulation or outflows," Foltz said."

[TomK]

"Nearby Supernova Sheds Light on Ancient Dust "

https://www.gemini.edu/node/21107

From Tom Geballe (one of my old mentors) at the Gemini Observatory on Mauna Kea:

"Thanks to two allocations of Director’s Discretionary Time and a successful Fast-Turnaround program, an international team (including Gemini Emeritus Astronomer Tom Geballe, who wrote this summary on behalf of the team) used Gemini North/GNIRS to follow the evolution of the near-infrared spectrum of the core-collapse supernova 2017eaw (ccSN 2017eaw) over three semesters. The data obtained from this relatively nearby event may help us to better understand the existence of dusty galaxies in the early, much more distant Universe.

One of the unexpected discoveries in studies of the very early Universe is that many high redshift galaxies are “dusty.” These dusty galaxies exist as recently as several hundred million to a billion years after the Big Bang. The origin of this dust is somewhat of a mystery, because stars with masses similar to the Sun, which constitute the vast majority of stars in a galaxy, would not have evolved to the dust-producing stage in such a short time. Thus, there must be another source of dust in these very distant and very young galaxies."