News
News
Keck Telescope and Cosmic Lens Resolve Nature and Fate of Early Star-Forming
PASADENA, Calif. (October 15th, 2008) Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and their colleagues have provided unique insight into the nature of a young star-forming galaxy as it appeared only two billion years after the Big Bang and determined how the galaxy may eventually evolve to become a system like our own Milky […]
Read More >KECK OBSERVATORY OPEN HOUSE SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2008: WELCOME TO THE EDGE OF DISCOVERY
(September 4th, 2008) W. M. Keck Observatorys 2008 Open House will feature “hands-on activities” and displays presenting the science, technology and excitement of astronomy.
Read More >MOST BLACK HOLES MIGHT COME IN ONLY SMALL AND LARGE
(August 20th, 2008) Black holes are sometimes huge cosmic beasts, billions of times the mass of our sun, and sometimes petite with just a few times the sun’s mass. But do black holes also come in size medium? Research combining data from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory […]
Read More >RARE STAR MAKING MACHINE FOUND IN EARLY UNIVERSE
(July 11th, 2008) Astronomers have uncovered an extreme stellar machine of a galaxy in the very remote universe, pumping out stars at a surprising rate of up to 4,000 per year. In comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy turns out an average of just 10 stars per year. The discovery was made possible by combining […]
Read More >ASTRONOMERS WEIGH THE COLDEST BROWN DWARFS WITH ASTRONOMY’S SHARPEST EYES
Honolulu (June 2nd, 2008) Astronomers have used ultrasharp images obtained with the Keck Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope to determine for the first time the masses of the coldest class of “failed stars,” a.k.a. brown dwarfs. With masses as light as 3 percent the mass of the sun, these are the lowest mass free-floating objects […]
Read More >KECK, HUBBLE IMAGES SHOW CONTINUED TURBULENCE IN JUPITER’S ATMOSPHERE
Berkeley (May 22nd, 2008) Increased turbulence and storms first observed on Jupiter more than two years ago are still raging, according to astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, who snapped high-resolution pictures of the planet earlier this month. Captured with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and […]
Read More >COMPACT GALAXIES IN EARLY UNIVERSE PACK A BIG PUNCH
Baltimore, Md. (April 29th, 2008) Imagine receiving an announcement touting the birth of a baby 20 inches long and weighing 180 pounds. After reading this puzzling message, you would immediately think the baby’s weight was a misprint. Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, received a […]
Read More >NOVA PHENOMENON EXPLAINED WITH NULLING MODE AT KECK OBSERVATORY
MAUNA KEA (January 28th, 2008) First results from a new scientific instrument at W. M. Keck Observatory are helping scientists understand the physics behind recurrent novae, a type of cataclysmic star system. The results are overturning long-standing assumptions about powerful explosions called novae and have produced the first unified model for a nearby nova called […]
Read More >NASA Mega-Telescope Gears Up to Study Cosmos
(December 5th, 2007) NASA has selected three teams of scientists to begin studying disks of dust around nearby stars starting in February 2008, using the Keck Interferometer in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. This sophisticated new system combines the observing power of the two large Keck telescopes into a single mega-telescope. The announcement follows completion of the […]
Read More >Keck Helps Discover Record Fifth Planet
Berkeley (November 6th, 2007) A team of American astronomers announced the discovery of a record-breaking fifth planet around the nearby star 55 Cancri, making it the only star aside from the sun known to have five planets. The discovery comes after 19 years of observations of 55 Cancri and represents a milestone for the California […]
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