black holes and gray matter. in one thousand tangos.

             

“Just over 9,000 feet up Mount Lemmon in the Coronado National Forest sits the University of Arizona’s SkyCenter, which houses the largest telescope in the southwest open for public observing. The university boasts an elite academic astronomy program, and the telescope is a Tucson treasure; scholars travel from around the world to spend an evening studying the far-off galaxies visible from the observatory. The university recently teamed up with another of Tucson’s big draws: the Miraval Resort & Spa, known for its experiential programming. Beginning in February, Miraval will offer its own, more grounded version of “space tourism,” with excursions to the SkyCenter for stargazing, and to the university campus where visitors will be able to see some of the world’s largest telescope mirrors being built. … If a visit to an underground site that gives the impression of — as the astronomy layman and Miraval president Michael Tompkins calls it — “a top-secret C.I.A. laboratory” isn’t enough, Day 2 includes an evening at the SkyCenter guided by Adam Block, an astro-photographer and winner of the 2012 Hubble Award. Block says this offers visitors the chance “to see, really with their own eyes, what the universe looks like; the kind of things most only read about in books or see on TV.” ”

LLANO DE CHAJNANTOR, Chile — Trucks stall on the road to this plateau 16,597 feet up in the Atacama Desert, where scientists are installing one of the world’s largest ground-based astronomical projects. Heads ache. Noses bleed. Dizziness overcomes the researchers toiling in the shadow of the Licancabur volcano. “Then there’s what we call ‘jelly legs,’ ” said Diego García-Appadoo, a Spanish astronomer studying galaxy formation. “You feel shattered, as if you ran a marathon.” Still, the same conditions that make the Atacama, Earth’s driest desert, so inhospitable make it beguiling for astronomy. In northern Chile, it is far from big cities, with little light pollution. Its arid climate prevents radio signals from being absorbed by water droplets. The altitude, as high as the Himalaya base camps for climbers preparing to scale Mount Everest, places astronomers closer to the heavens. Opened last October, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, known as ALMA, will have spread 66 radio antennas near the spine of the Andes by the time it is completed next year. Drawing more than $1 billion in funding mainly from the United States, European countries and Japan, ALMA will help the oxygen-deprived scientists flocking to this region to study the origins of the universe. […] ALMA’s construction, said Jesús Mosterín, a prominent Spanish philosopher who writes about the frontier between science and philosophy, and who visited the observatory last year, is taking place at “the only time in history that windows into the universe are being thrown wide open.”

LLANO DE CHAJNANTOR, Chile — Trucks stall on the road to this plateau 16,597 feet up in the Atacama Desert, where scientists are installing one of the world’s largest ground-based astronomical projects. Heads ache. Noses bleed. Dizziness overcomes the researchers toiling in the shadow of the Licancabur volcano. “Then there’s what we call ‘jelly legs,’ ” said Diego García-Appadoo, a Spanish astronomer studying galaxy formation. “You feel shattered, as if you ran a marathon.”

Still, the same conditions that make the Atacama, Earth’s driest desert, so inhospitable make it beguiling for astronomy. In northern Chile, it is far from big cities, with little light pollution. Its arid climate prevents radio signals from being absorbed by water droplets. The altitude, as high as the Himalaya base camps for climbers preparing to scale Mount Everest, places astronomers closer to the heavens.

Opened last October, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, known as ALMA, will have spread 66 radio antennas near the spine of the Andes by the time it is completed next year. Drawing more than $1 billion in funding mainly from the United States, European countries and Japan, ALMA will help the oxygen-deprived scientists flocking to this region to study the origins of the universe. […]

ALMA’s construction, said Jesús Mosterín, a prominent Spanish philosopher who writes about the frontier between science and philosophy, and who visited the observatory last year, is taking place at “the only time in history that windows into the universe are being thrown wide open.”

Astronomers discover ‘Star Wars planet’ with two suns An astrological discovery that would make Luke Skywalker a little homesick is making waves this week — a faraway planet has been found to have two suns. A team of experts used the NASA Kepler space telescope to discover the planet, which orbits around two large stars — similar to Tatooine, the fictional home of Skywalker in the Star Wars films. In this case, however, the discovery doesn’t get the Hollywood treatment in terms of a name. Its name is the far more prosaic Kepler-16b. via: nationalpost

Astronomers discover ‘Star Wars planet’ with two suns

An astrological discovery that would make Luke Skywalker a little homesick is making waves this week — a faraway planet has been found to have two suns.

A team of experts used the NASA Kepler space telescope to discover the planet, which orbits around two large stars — similar to Tatooine, the fictional home of Skywalker in the Star Wars films.

In this case, however, the discovery doesn’t get the Hollywood treatment in terms of a name. Its name is the far more prosaic Kepler-16b.

via: nationalpost

BBC: A "galactic lens" has revealed that the Universe will probably expand forever

Knowing the distribution of dark energy tells astronomers that the Universe will continue to get bigger indefinitely. Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term “absolute zero”. Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, a leading cosmologist and co-author of this study, said that the findings finally proved “exactly what the fate of the Universe will be”.

*Brain explodes.* 

NASA: The collision of the Antennae galaxies — located about 62 million light yrs from Earth— which began more than 100 million years ago and is still occurring, has triggered the formation of millions of stars in clouds of dusts and gas in the galaxies. The most massive of these young stars have already sped through their evolution in a few million years and exploded as supernovas.

NASA: The collision of the Antennae galaxies — located about 62 million light yrs from Earth— which began more than 100 million years ago and is still occurring, has triggered the formation of millions of stars in clouds of dusts and gas in the galaxies. The most massive of these young stars have already sped through their evolution in a few million years and exploded as supernovas.

©2011 Kateoplis