News
News
16-year-old Cosmic Mystery Solved, Revealing Stellar Missing Link
The Blue Ring Nebula, which perplexed scientists for over a decade, appears to be the youngest known example of two stars merged into one Maunakea, Hawaii – In 2004, scientists with NASA’s space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spotted an object unlike any they’d seen before in our Milky Way galaxy: a large, faint blob of […]
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Unexplained Brightness from Colossal Explosion
Maunakea, Hawaii – Astronomers have discovered the brightest infrared light from a short gamma-ray burst ever seen, with a bizarre glow that is more luminous than previously thought was possible. Its half-second flash of light, detected in May of this year, came from a violent explosion of gamma rays billons of light-years away that unleashed […]
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Galaxies In The Infant Universe Were Surprisingly Mature
Maunakea, Hawaii – In the first and largest multi-wavelength survey of distant galaxies in the early universe ever conducted, an international team of astronomers has discovered that massive galaxies were already much more mature in the early universe than previously expected. The survey, called ALPINE (the ALMA Large Program to Investigate C+ at Early Times), […]
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Active volcanoes feed Io’s sulfurous atmosphere
Maunakea, Hawaii – Astronomers have made a breakthrough in understanding how volcanic activity directly affects the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Io. In a remarkable first, new radio images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile show plumes of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and sulfur monoxide (SO) gas spewing from Io’s volcanoes and into its […]
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Anemic Star Cluster Breaks Metal-poor Record
Maunakea, Hawaii – In a surprising discovery, astronomers using two Maunakea Observatories – W. M. Keck Observatory and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) – have found a globular star cluster in the Andromeda Galaxy that contains a record-breaking low amount of metals. The stars in the cluster, called RBC EXT8, have on average 800 times less iron […]
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Director’s Message: How Andrea Ghez Won the Nobel for an Experiment Nobody Thought Would Work
She insisted on doing it anyway—and ultimately provided conclusive evidence for a supermassive black hole at the core of the Milky Way Standing in my office 25 years ago was an unknown, newly minted astronomer with a half-smile on her face. She had come with an outrageous request—really a demand—that my team modify our exhaustively […]
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Andrea Ghez Wins Nobel Prize in Physics
UCLA Professor is Honored for Her Pioneering Research on the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole Video: Dr. Ghez describes her discoveries Resources and links More: video, radio, and media Maunakea, Hawaii – Longtime W. M. Keck Observatory observer Dr. Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics and director of […]
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W. M. Keck Observatory’s Adaptive Optics System Upgraded to ‘See’ in Infrared
Maunakea, Hawaii – W. M. Keck Observatory can now provide adaptive optics (AO) correction using light from cosmic objects at wavelengths invisible to the naked eye. Near-infrared AO wavefront sensing, in addition to sensing in visible light, is a new capability on the Keck II telescope thanks to a major upgrade, which involves the installation […]
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Review Of NSF’S Top Transformative Astronomy Tech Highlights Maunakea Observatories
Maunakea, Hawaii – A new study is shining a national spotlight on astronomy in Hawaii, underscoring the world-class science enabled by Maunakea Observatories’ cutting-edge technology. The study evaluates the 30-year history of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation (ATI) program, which encourages ground-based telescopes to develop innovative instrumentation, even at high technical […]
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Unraveling a Spiral Stream of Dusty Embers from a Massive Binary Stellar Forge
Maunakea, Hawaii – Astronomers using three Maunakea Observatories have discovered one of the most prolific dust-making Wolf-Rayet star systems known, remarkably producing an entire Earth mass of dust every year. With nearly two decades of images from the world’s largest observatories – including W. M. Keck Observatory, Subaru Telescope, and Gemini Observatory in Hawaii – […]
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