Mar 28, 2017
Help us Discover Planet 9! We've just launched a brand new project on BBC Stargazing Live. We're searching for another massive planet in our Solar System - the hypothesised Planet 9. Join the hunt right now at www.plaetninesearch.org.
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Help us Discover Planet 9! We've just launched a brand new project on BBC Stargazing Live. We're searching for another massive planet in our Solar System - the hypothesised Planet 9. Join the hunt right now at www.plaetninesearch.org.
ANU astronomers create most comprehensive map of the southern sky Astronomers at The Australian National University (ANU) have created the most comprehensive map of the southern sky that can be viewed online by anyone around the world. The map includes about 70,000 individual images, capturing nearly 300 million individual stars and galaxies.
MAJOR RELEASE OF SOUTHERN SKY ASTRONOMICAL DATA NOW AVAILABLE AT NCI Over 18 terabytes of southern sky imagery sourced from The Australian National University’s SkyMapper telescope (http://skymapper.anu.edu.au) is now made available worldwide, thanks to essential ongoing support from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). This is the first data release of its kind for the SkyMapper project, and follows many years of preparation by the ANU SkyMapper team and NCI. Astronomers wishing to learn more about the southern night sky will now have access to an unprecedented amount of imagery and measurements. Dr. Christian Wolf, Principal Investigator of the ANU SkyMapper team, spoke highly of NCI and their involvement in the project, saying, “For the success of the project, it is crucial to have a partner on-board, from the beginning, who was able to commit the required resources in the long run.” “The SkyMapper project will generate 2 petabytes of data (raw and calibrated), which need to be not only archived, but accessible on-demand by the Australian and world science community through a real-time access portal,” added Dr. Wolf. Public access to the catalogues and images for the SkyMapper First Data Release is provided by the All-Sky Virtual Observatory (ASVO, http://nci.org.au/services/virtual-laboratories/all-sky-virtual-observatory), an online federated network of astronomical datasets. NCI hosts the SkyMapper node of ASVO, providing an integrated and comprehensive environment for the hosting, analysis and exploration of the SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey data, including image details and object measurements. NCI’s resources are required at every stage of the SkyMapper data ingestion process. Raw data from the SkyMapper telescope is transferred directly to NCI and then duplicated, with copies prepared on both the high-speed global Lustre filesystems (hard disk based) as well as the tape-based archive. Having live access to the data allows researchers to carry out image processing and brightness measurements of night sky objects. This process categorises objects within the raw night sky imagery, including stars, galaxies, asteroids or even candidates for the elusive Planet Nine, a large hypothetical object in the outer solar system. This information is stored in the SkyMapper database, hosted at NCI, which underpins current and future releases of SkyMapper data. This latest data release can be accessed at http://skymapper.anu.edu.au. This release includes upgrades from the original dataset provided to the Australian scientific community in June 2017. SkyMapper will eventually observe every part of the southern sky 36 times and is estimated to generate over 600,000 images. In 2014, ANU researchers using data from the SkyMapper telescope discovered the oldest star in the universe. More recently, astronomers have turned to initial releases of SkyMapper imagery in the hunt for Planet 9. SkyMapper data is made available through the SkyMapper node of the All-Sky Virtual Observatory. Partial support for the development of ASVO SkyMapper resources has been provided though funds awarded by Astronomy Australia Ltd on behalf the Australian Government programs NCRIS, ANDS, NeCTAR and EIF.
Belgische amateur-sterrenkundige Els Baeten ontdekt supernova!
Belgische amateur-sterrenkundige Els Baeten ontdekt supernova!
De Belgische amateur-sterrenkundige Els Baeten heeft onlangs meegeholpen met professionele sterrenkundigen om een supernova te ontdekken. Samen mete en andere amateur, Alan Craggs uit Schotland, doet zij mee aan het Zooniverse-project Skymapper, een zogeheten Citizen Science project, waarbij vrijwilligers over de hele wereld mee helpen om foto’s van sterrenstelsels te bestuderen en te kijken of…
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Citizen Scientists Discover Five New Supernovas
More than 40,000 citizen stargazers have helped to classify over 2 million celestial objects and identify five never-before-seen supernovas, in a massive example of citizen science at work. An amateur astronomy project of cosmic proportions, established by scientists at the Australian National University, asked volunteers to look through images taken by the SkyMapper telescope and search for new objects, with a particular focus on finding new supernovas. The project was set up using the Zooniverse platform (run by the University of Oxford), which hosts many other citizen science projects, and which was promoted on the BBC2 TV series "Stargazing Live," from March 18 to March 20. The participants were asked to look at star-filled patches of the night sky, taken by the SkyMapper telescope. http://dlvr.it/9m8BsF
Citizen Scientists Discover Five New Supernovas
More than 40,000 citizen stargazers have helped to classify over 2 million celestial objects and identify five never-before-seen supernovas, in a massive example of citizen science at work. An amateur astronomy project of cosmic proportions, established by scientists at the Australian National University, asked volunteers to look through images taken by the SkyMapper telescope and search for new objects, with a particular focus on finding new supernovas. The project was set up using the Zooniverse platform (run by the University of Oxford), which hosts many other citizen science projects, and which was promoted on the BBC2 TV series "Stargazing Live," from March 18 to March 20. The participants were asked to look at star-filled patches of the night sky, taken by the SkyMapper telescope. http://dlvr.it/9ZyXMg
New Post has been published on The Rakyat Post
New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/world/2014/02/10/ancient-star-helps-scientists-understand-universes-origins/
Ancient star helps scientists understand universe's origins
Two men walk under an artificial starlit sky, representing the universe in Germany in this file picture. Australian astronomers say they have found the oldest known star in the universe. — AFP pic[/caption]
SYDNEY
Australian astronomers have found the oldest known star in the universe, a discovery that may help to resolve a long-standing discrepancy between observations and predictions of the Big Bang billions of years ago.
Dr Stefan Keller, lead researcher at the Australian National University Research School, said his team had seen the chemical fingerprint of the “first star”. After 11 years of searching, the star was discovered using the SkyMapper telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory.
“This star was formed shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago,” Keller said.
“It’s giving us insight into our fundamental place in the universe. What we’re seeing is the origin of where all the material around us that we need to survive came from.”
Simply put, the Big Bang was the inception of the universe, he said, with nothing before that event.
The ancient star is about 6,000 light years from Earth — relatively close in astronomical terms. It was one of 60 million stars photographed by SkyMapper in its first year.
“This is the first time we’ve unambiguously been able to say we’ve got material from the first generation of stars,” Keller said. “We’re now going to be able to put that piece of the jigsaw puzzle in its right place.”
The composition of the newly discovered star shows it formed in the wake of a primordial star, which had a mass 60 times that of our Sun.
Keller said it was previously thought primordial stars died in extremely violent explosions that polluted huge volumes of space with iron. But the ancient star shows signs of pollution with lighter elements such as carbon and magnesium — with no sign of iron.
“What that means is we had a long-held theory that the first stars to form will be extremely massive because they are formed out of pure hydrogen and helium.”
“A star is like an onion — it has all these layers and the heaviest material like iron is right down in the core. The only thing to come out of it was the carbon and a little bit of magnesium from that supernova and that’s what we’re seeing today in the star that we’ve discovered.”
The discovery was published in the latest edition of the journal Nature.