08-07-2017, 11:08 PM
"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
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