Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

Thanks for that, Dan. Interesting tidbit: back in the 60s and early 70s, decades before exoplanets were actually discovered and confirmed, there were claims that Barnard's Star had an exoplanet. The evidence was never strong enough for a proper confirmation though.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Sunday snowfall at UKIRT on Mauna Kea:
http://www.eao.hawaii.edu/weather/images/ukirt.jpg
(Hope you & Pam are well TomK)

[TomK]

Thank you, HOTPE. Despite all the serious medical issues Pam is facing, she's doing remarkably well. We went back to visit all the wonderful places we know on the Pacific Coast Highway in the last couple of weeks and had a great time despite being a little less active than previous visits!

Stuck in HNL right now due to a delayed flight and hope to post here a little more in the next week or so. Have to admit the bank balance took a bit of a hit, but it was worth it...

[dan d]

Glad u had a chance to take some precious time off with the one u love.lotsa good memories on the 1 and 101. I surfed most of it at one time.
Pizza dan


HPP

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

The observatories on Mauna Kea have launched a new website with news, future events, and other information. You can also sign up for an email newsletter at their website:

https://maunakeaobservatories.org

It’s a nicely designed website with a lot of good info, but I think TomK gets us the latest news even sooner, right here on Punaweb.

[dan_c]

quote:

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Originally posted by HereOnThePrimalEdge

The observatories on Mauna Kea have launched a new website with news, future events, and other information. You can also sign up for an email newsletter at their website:

https://maunakeaobservatories.org

It’s a nicely designed website with a lot of good info, but I think TomK gets us the latest news even sooner, right here on Punaweb.

---

Thanks for the link... it is nicely designed. I'm glad someone(s) thought to put the astronomy news from the mountain in one place.

[TomK]

Discovery of the most distant object in our solar system - so far

The Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea was the first to spot it but needed help to confirm the object was part of the solar system. It's the first non-stellar object to be found beyond 100 astronomical units, i.e., 100 times farther than the Earth is from the Sun.

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-most-distant-solar.html

[PaulW]

Interesting! This may be a dumb question but how come it was only discovered now? What has changed?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

I like that they nicknamed the new object Farout.

It's too bad this 1960's trend didn't start when the undiscovered hypothetical Planet X was dubbed. It could have been called Out-A-Sight.

[TomK]

"This may be a dumb question but how come it was only discovered now? What has changed?"

These distant and small objects are extremely faint and can only really be detected by the largest telescopes and only if they happen to be pointing that way. Even when they might see a distant solar system object, it might not be obvious unless you are taking a very long exposure or are visiting the same piece of sky repeatedly and see a very dim object move over time - given the distance that movement will be tiny.

So it's hard to do, especially when the telescope is being used for several other projects.