Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[Guest]

TomK with respect. It was you earlier this morning who asked on this thread some here like myself to " just think about what the TMT could achieve or do"?

If you don't want another thread about the TMT and its possibilities, please try not to ask some of us to think or compare it for a change. Aloha

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

please try not to ask some of us to think

gypsy,
I think TomK was asking us to think about what could be discovered if the TMT were studying the night sky on Mauna Kea. Like stars, exoplanets, galaxies, etc. Not PGV, ROD, cesspools, and courtrooms.

“What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality." -David Bohm

[TomK]

"I think TomK was asking us to think about what could be discovered if the TMT were studying the night sky on Mauna Kea. Like stars, exoplanets, galaxies, etc. Not PGV, ROD, cesspools, and courtrooms."

Exactly.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

The NASA Infra Red Telescope on Mauna Kea made a surprising discovery about the red Spot on (or above) Jupiter:

That finding, reported on Wednesday in a paper published in the journal Nature, is the latest piece of a puzzle that has been confusing planetary scientists since 1973 when NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft flew by and took the first temperature measurements of the solar system’s biggest planet.

By their calculations, scientists expected that the warmth of sunlight impinging on Jupiter should heat the upper atmosphere to a cool -100 degrees. Instead, the temperature was about 1,000 degrees.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/scienc....html?_r=0

There’s a mystery above Jupiter. The planet is five times farther from the sun than Earth is—and yet has similar atmospheric temperatures to our own. So where’s all that extra heat coming from? It turns out, Jupiter may have a second heat source in its Big Red Spot.
http://gizmodo.com/researchers-just-solv...1784394911


“What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality." -David Bohm

[TomK]

Thanks for that, HOTPE. The IRTF discovery has made the news around the world, presumably because a lot of people already know about Jupiter's great red spot. E.g.,

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36904456

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vao...18940.html

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/health/jup...index.html

(Quite why CNN chose to put their article in the health section is a little beyond me...)

[TomK]

Despite recent hijacking attempts, here's a little more info about the discovery of over 100 new exoplanets involving Mauna Kea telescopes. It's an interesting read.

http://www.civilbeat.org/2016/07/civil-g...telescope/

[PaulW]

Good article, thanks. A quote:
"“We really need the next big optical telescopes like TMT to get sufficiently detailed spectroscopy to identify possible bio-signatures” in the spectrum of light detected from exoplanets, he said, referring to the long-delayed Thirty Meter Telescope project planned for the top of Mauna Kea, on the Big Island. “That’s the frontier.”"

[TomK]

Not so much a discovery, but had to share this; a stunningly beautiful and very orange view of the Milky Way and sky from a photographer visiting Mauna Kea.

http://www.space.com/33453-mauna-kea-mil...photo.html

[Mr nice guy]

I'm having more and more of a difficult time understanding how discovering things outside of this planet benefits us in the here and now (not that we have a future or that I lack vision).

Oh, if a telescope could have let us detect global warming 50 years ago and if we had the will to act, perhaps we could have saved ourselves from ourselves.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

if a telescope could have let us detect global warming 50 years ago

It may not have been a telescope, but it was a scientific observatory, about 50 years ago. When the discovery of rising CO2 levels was made, no one knew exactly what it meant at the time. It's the same with astronomical observatories, the significance of discoveries made today may only become apparent decades later.

For more on the detection of global warming see the thread:
Mauna Loa Observatory - 403.39 ppm CO2

The moon kind of surprises me sometimes. I’ll be out at night and I’ll see a nice moon, and say, “Hey, that looks good.” Then I’ll say, “Oh sh-t, I went up there one time!” Kind of surprises me. It’s like there are two Moons, you know—the one that’s usually around, and then that one. - Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut