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It's full of stars!
#1
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-s...5731_n.jpg

This picture of our Milky Way taken from the top of Mauna Kea (big island) Hawaii by Andrew Hara remind us that even though we discovered thousands of new worlds, there are still billions of them to find over there.
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#2
Thanks, ericlp, that's really nice! Theres a professional photographer called Wally Pacholka who has taken the most stunning photographs of the night sky and Milky Way from Hawaii. If you haven't heard of him or seen his photography I strongly encourage you to do so, the pictures are amazing. Links are Big Island pictures, Kauai pictures and Maui pictures.

The number of stars and planets out there is simply overwhelming. We've been doing a project at UKIRT for the last seven years (we've just recently completed it) called the Ultra Deep Survey (UDS). We've been observing one small spot in the sky as often as possible at infrared wavelengths - an area roughly the same size as the full moon. It is by far and away the deepest infrared survey of its kind and has been my favourite project over the last few years. The guy in charge of the project, Omar Almaini is a very good friend of mine, and in fact I was his support scientist when he first visited the island to observe at UKIRT 16 years ago when he was still a student.

If you're curious, they have put some of the data online in the form of a zoomable image. Personally, I could play around for hours with this image, but that's just me! It's the BzK one at the UDS gallery. The data are from UKIRT (infrared) and Subaru (optical). Red objects in the field are ones only detected by UKIRT, and are very distant galaxies (optical light is shifted to infrared wavelengths due to the expansion of the universe, so UKIRT sees them but Subaru doesn't). The image doesn't look impressive on its own, but start zooming in and moving around...

So, we now think the majority of stars have planets, a typical galaxy such as ours has 200 billion or so stars, and then look at that picture and have a guess how many galaxies are in it. And then remember that's only a tiny patch of sky.

So sorry for blabbing on!

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/
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#3
Hi Tom,

Apologies in advance for my ignorance ... But do your ' neighbors ' next door so to speak up there ever call over and say something like .. " Holy crap, you guys just gotta see this ! "

And if so ... Can you, or they just 'switch over' to see it ???

aloha,
pog
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#4
Pog,

It took me a few seconds to realise what you were asking. I saw "neighbors" and immediately thought you were asking me if my neighbors with the vicious dog called me about what's up there, and I was trying to work out the joke you might be trying to make!

Then I saw "up there", so think I understand what you're asking!

I can't remember another observatory on MK seeing something astronomically related when they then rang us up and also asked us to look at it, but technically, yes, it's possible to do that. There are calls made between the telescopes every night about weather or unusual things going on but rarely to actually slew the telescope itself to observe something. Right now I can think of only one circumstance where that might happen, and that's if a bright supernova goes off in our own Galaxy and is seen immediately by someone on the mountain and alerts every one else. Even then they might not want to do that and get the headlines for themselves because it is such a rare event (once every few hundred years).

If some strange UFO were seen then there would be calls but only to get others outside the observatories to check whether someone was becoming unbalanced...

However, most of the telescopes on MK can react quickly to sudden astronomical events. We do it often and have a programme set up to do this exact thing. The call to observe something though, rarely, if ever, comes from another telescope on the mountain. More often or not it comes from an orbiting satellite observatory built to detect such events (such as Gamma Ray Bursts or GRBs). As soon as we get the alert we can be on it within seconds, literally. It often takes a few minutes for the alert to get to us though because it does need checking, usually from people on the other side of the planet.

You might be interested in this just as an example, and hope the above answered your question! (It wasn't ignorant at all btw!).

http://www.stfc.ac.uk/News+and+Events/5842.aspx

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"Twenty minutes after the burst, Tanvir and his colleagues detected an infrared source at the Swift position using the STFC’s United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. "Burst afterglows provide us with the most information about the exploded star and its environs," Tanvir said. "But we have to target afterglows quickly because they fade out so fast.""
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I was at UKIRT that night. We were closed due to bad weather but opened up on getting the alert because it looked significant and the target was about to set. If the weather had been good that evening we'd have likely observed that target within ten minutes of the burst being detected, but we had to spend 10 minutes opening the dome and getting the telescope pointed correctly and focused - the other ten minutes was the time spent by the satellite re-orientating itself to confirm its own detection and then sending out the alert.

I wrote about it in my blog if you're interested:

http://apacificview.blogspot.com/2009/04...-away.html

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/
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#5
Sorry, everyone, I feel as though I've trampled on ericlp's thread a little! Apologies, ericlp. Your comment about what we've yet to discover triggered my enthusiasm once again and for that I do at least have to say thanks! And sorry at the same time.

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/
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#6


That is a beautiful photo, thanks for sharing!
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#7
wow... fascinating...!

-- rainshadow
-- rainshadow
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#8
Beautifull picture, Eric. The sheer enormity of the universe truly is mind boggling! Thanks for the link Tom, can't wait to get some time to play with it and do some zooming
around in that spot in the sky, and sorry about the shutting down of your current project!
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#9
LaurelJ, just so there's no confusion, if you're referring to the end of the UDS project, then that was always the plan, it was a seven year project from the time it started in 2005. In fact we'll be taking more data for it this summer after a new (much shorter) proposal was approved, so that BzK image, when it's finally updated with all the UKIRT data will be even more stunning and it'll be several years before anything beats it! For the time being though, I still love panning around that image!

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/
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#10
mahalo for fun info Tom !

Guessing you don't have to deal with any wandering canines + betting there is a refreshing sense of relief that no one feels the need to be armed or 'racked' UP for 'defense' up there. From terra firma launched 'invasion's at least : )

aloha,
pog
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