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All,
There will be an "historic" announcement made in a few hours. Although this has been kept quite secret the expectation is an observation of the black hole in the center of our Galaxy. If so, it will likely involve the Event Horizon Telescope which includes the JCMT observatory on Mauna Kea.
E.g., https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers...-milky-way
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And in local news about the black hole image:
Maunakea observatories play crucial role in first image of Milky Way black hole
The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes including the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and the Submillimeter Array (SMA) on Maunakea.
“These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very centre of our galaxy, and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings,” said Geoffrey Bower, an affiliate astronomer at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and EHT project scientist, who led Hawaiʻi operations for the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei.
In 1986, the UH Institute for Astronomy (IfA) operated Infrared Telescope Facility on Maunakea recorded the very first image of the Milky Way’s Galactic Center, which is the region about which our entire galaxy is rotating. That image set a vital foundation for understanding black holes and would eventually lead to the discovery of the bizarre objects in the midst.
“The fact that the first image of the Galactic Center was recorded from Maunakea, a critical early step in the marathon of research that now culminates in an image of the black hole that lurks in the core of our galaxy, is yet another testament to the revolution in knowledge Maunakea makes possible,” said Doug Simons, executive director at IfA.
https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2022/05/12/m...milky-way/
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Some more sci-reality from the Kecks this time atop Mauna Kea.
One of the biggest mysteries of the early universe is how galaxies formed and how the star formation rates in those galaxies are so high. One explanation is that there are clouds of cold and diffuse neutral hydrogen (H2) which is virtually invisible but provides the fuel for galaxy and star formation. The team that used Keck used a simple idea - let's use a background light source to illuminate the clouds. Of course, we can't just go there and place a light bulb behind the clouds, they are 11 billion light-years away, but you can find a quasar or an even more cool idea, a galaxy that has its light magnified by more hard to see things (see Einstein) and use that as the background light source.
Guess what? The H2 clouds showed up.
https://www.space.com/elusive-gas-clouds...y-universe
https://keckobservatory.org/dla
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Not Mauna Kea (unless TomK knows of a Big Island contribution, but from Pan-STARRS1 on Haleakala, Maui.
The Whole Universe Catalog, or thereabouts:
A team of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy and Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary has produced a massive new catalog of high-fidelity distance estimates to more than 350 million galaxies, revealing in detail the soap-bubble structure of the universe.
https://mauinow.com/2022/08/16/uh-astron...-universe/
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As far as I'm aware, this was purely a Pan-STARRS project based on data from WISE. There may have been contributions from Hilo-based astronomers but would have to check. However, as with all surveys like this, they provide interesting objects to study with the large observatories on Mauna Kea plus space telescopes, so it's a huge contribution to our understanding of the universe that Hawaii provides.
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The James Webb space telescope (with components tested on Mauna Kea) has been sending back stunning images. If you'd like to find out more:
The Webb First Images Celebration is scheduled for 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10, outside the Waimea library. The family-friendly NASA@My Library event is free and open to the public and is being presented in partnership with Canada-France-Hawai‘i Telescope, Girl Scouts of Hawai‘i, ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, NASA Solar System Ambassadors, University of Hawai‘i Institute for Astronomy and W.M. Keck Observatory.
Full info:
https://bigislandnow.com/2022/09/04/thel...lebration/
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Most detailed and complete observations of the neutral zone
My apologies if Trekkies got excited, but a recent study using the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea details the observations of the interaction of the radiation of massive young stars and the region surrounding them where star and planet formation takes place. This is likely very similar to the conditions that our own solar system experienced when it was forming so provides a framework we can use to understand how the Earth formed and how life was able to form here.
" Massive stars' blasts hitting Orion's sword mapped in unprecedented detail"
" Astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii Island have captured from Maunakea the most detailed and complete images ever taken of the zone where the famed constellation of Orion gets zapped with ultraviolet (UV) radiation from massive young stars."
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Massi...l_999.html
" Images of Blasts From Massive Stars Captured in Detail Using Telescope Atop Maunakea"
"“Never before have we been able to observe at a small scale how interstellar matter structures depend on their environments, particularly how planetary systems could form in environments strongly irradiated by massive stars,” Emilie Habart, an Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale associate professor at Paris-Saclay University and lead author of a paper on the discover, said in a press release. “This may allow us to better understand the heritage of the interstellar medium in planetary systems, namely our origins.” "
https://bigislandnow.com/2022/09/07/imag...-maunakea/
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@ Dear Tom ..as per peer reviewed .. will you also accept evidence on ivermectin ? As peer reviewed proof comes out ? Or will you simply listen to the narrative CNN/CDC bleeting. ? and run with that ?
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(09-11-2022, 08:14 AM)elepaio pid= Wrote:@ Dear Tom ..as per peer reviewed .. will you also accept evidence on ivermectin ? As peer reviewed proof comes out ? Or will you simply listen to the narrative CNN/CDC bleeting. ? and run with that ?
WTF has this to do with discoveries by the telescopes on Mauna Kea?
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