121–140 of 178 results

Professional Telescopes

Messy Cleanup Awaits Subaru Telescope

It's always bad news when your coolant line ruptures and spews antifreeze everywhere. It's really bad news when the stuff leaks all over one of the world's largest telescopes.

Space Missions

The Star That Changed Our Universe

Modern observers have revisited a dim variable star in the Andromeda Galaxy whose discovery in 1923 rocked the astronomical world.

Cosmology

Closeup of a Black-Hole Powerhouse

Come along with radio astronomers as they zoom in on the powerful, high-energy jets of Centaurus A and the supermassive black hole at its heart.

MMT Observatory

Science and Space Policy

Praising Arizona — II

S&T contributing editor Govert Schilling visits observatories in southern Arizona.

Professional Telescopes

Praising Arizona — I

S&T contributing editor Govert Schilling visits observatories in southern Arizona

Professional Telescopes

Forced "Hibernation" for SETI Telescope

Astronomers have shut down the innovative Allen Telescope Array in northern California — a huge blow to the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

People, Places, and Events

McDonald Observatory Dodges Wildfire

The Rock House Fire has consumed more than 300 square miles in West Texas and came within about a mile of the telescopes atop Mount Locke before abating. But the nearby town of Fort Davis wasn't so fortunate.

Professional Telescopes

Gemini Telescope's "Bad-Seeing Blaster"

Ten years in development, a new system now being tested in Chile uses a 50-watt laser to create a constellation of five artificial stars high in the atmosphere. The goal? Soon it will allow the giant Gemini Telescope to record ultrasharp views never before possible.

Astronomy and Society

"Hidden Treasures" Winners Announced

It was challenging to pick the best of the best from among nearly 100 entries. But there's no argument that the melding of raw European Southern Observatory images with amateur astrophotographers' creativity has produced stunning results.

Astronomy and Society

Create Great Images, Win Cool Stuff!

Are you up for a challenge? Work some computer magic on images obtained with the ESO telescopes, and you might win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

Professional Telescopes

Kicking SOFIA's Tires

Take a peek inside an amazing "flying telescope" now being readied for routine observing runs in the stratosphere.

Haystack Observatory (aerial view)

Professional Telescopes

My "Backyard" Radio Observatory

Nestled in the woods of suburban Boston is a 1,300-acre complex of radio telescopes that have served civilian astronomers — and super-secret defense projects — for nearly 50 years.

Observatories on Kitt Peak

Astronomy and Society

Darkness Still Reigns Over Kitt Peak

Since astronomers started calling Tucson home in 1958, the city's population has quadrupled to more than 500,000. Yet the night sky above the observatories on nearby Kitt Peak is as dark now as it was 20 years ago.

Solar System

Big Bear's Big New Eye

The "first-light" image from the world's largest solar telescope reveals details in an Earth-size sunspot only 50 miles across.

Exoplanets

One Star, Seven Planets

European astronomers had found a bustling solar system in the southern constellation Hydrus: a Sunlike star with at least five and probably seven worlds swarming around it.

Space Missions

Astro2010: U.S. Astronomy's Crystal Ball

If you had $12 billion to spend on ground- and space-based observatories over the next 10 years, how would decide what to build? A 255-page National Research Council study, just released, provides some answers.

Pan-STARRS in dawn's light

Professional Telescopes

Two Wide Eyes on the Sky

Astronomers are starting to make observations with the first Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii (seen here) and the LOFAR radio interferometer in the Netherlands.

Stellar Science

A Cauldron of Newborn Stars

The Hubble Space Telescope has returned its high-definition gaze to a spectacular bubble of glowing hydrogen known as N 11 in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Professional Telescopes

"First Light" for a Flying Telescope

SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, has finally feasted on starlight after a tortuous 14-year development.

Professional Telescopes

The Hidden Face of M83

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is already famous as a gorgeous deep-sky showpiece. Now astronomers have probed its structure with a high-resolution infrared view.