Extremely Large Telescope - A Home For The E-ELT
Science & Reason on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/ScienceReason ESOcast 16: E-ELT Site Chosen. On 26 April 2010, the ESO Council selected Cerro Armazones as the site for the planned 42-metre European Extremely Large Telescope. Cerro Armazones is an isolated mountain at 3060 metres altitude in the central part of Chile's Atacama Desert, some 130 kilometres south of the town of Antofagasta and about 20 kilometres away from Cerro Paranal, home of ESOs Very Large Telescope. --- Please subscribe to Science & Reason: • http://www.youtube.com/Best0fScience • http://www.youtube.com/ScienceMagazine • http://www.youtube.com/ScienceTV • http://www.youtube.com/FFreeThinker --- "This is an important milestone that allows us to finalise the baseline design of this very ambitious project, which will vastly advance astronomical knowledge," says Tim de Zeeuw, ESOs Director General. "I thank the site selection team for the tremendous work they have done over the past few years." ESOs next step is to build a European extremely large optical/infrared telescope (E-ELT) with a primary mirror 42 metres in diameter. The E-ELT will be "the worlds biggest eye on the sky" — the only such telescope in the world. ESO is drawing up detailed construction plans together with the community. The E-ELT will address many of the most pressing unsolved questions in astronomy, and may, eventually, revolutionise our perception of the Universe, much as Galileo's telescope did 400 years ago. The final go-ahead for construction is expected at the end of 2010, with the start of operations planned for 2018. The decision on the E-ELT site was taken by the ESO Council, which is the governing body of the Organisation composed of representatives of ESOs fourteen Member States, and is based on an extensive comparative meteorological investigation, which lasted several years. The majority of the data collected during the site selection campaigns will be made public in the course of the year 2010. http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1018/ .
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From EsoCast in 1080p, comes the announcement of a rash of new planet discoveries. Astronomers using ESO's leading exoplanet hunter HARPS have today announced more than fifty newly discovered planets around other stars. Among these are many rocky planets not much heavier than the Earth. One of them in particular orbits within the habitable zone around its star. Among the new planets just announced by scientists, sixteen are super-Earths - rocky planets up to ten times as massive as Earth. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time. A planet in orbit causes its star to regularly move backwards and forwards as seen from Earth. This creates a tiny shift of the star's spectrum that can be measured with an extremely sensitive spectrograph such as HARPS. In their quest to find a rocky planet that could harbor life, astronomers are now pushing HARPS even further. They have selected ten well-studied nearby stars similar to our Sun. Earlier observations showed that these were ideal stars to examine for even less massive planets. After two years of work, the team has found five light super-Earths around three of the stars. These planets are very good candidates for future observations looking for evidence of life. One of the newly found planets, named HD 85512 b, orbits inside the habitable zone. This is the narrow area around a star where water can exist in liquid form. Astronomers estimate that liquid water could possibly be present on this planet if it is a rocky world that has more than 50% cloud cover. By looking carefully at the results from the first 8 years of HARPS observations, the team has found that around 40% of stars similar to the Sun harbor at least one planet lighter than Saturn. These new results lead astronomers to believe that they could soon find more super-Earths in the habitable zones of their stars with HARPS. These planets will be great targets for powerful future telescopes to try to study their atmospheres looking for evidence of life. Thanks to HARPS, the search for another Earth elsewhere in the galaxy is picking up pace!
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Added: 2249 days ago by
deek
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Hubble Space Telescope Directly Observes Exoplanet
Science & Reason on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/ScienceReason Hubblecast 22: Hubble Space Telescope Directly Observes Exoplanet Orbiting Fomalhaut. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered an extrasolar planet, for the first time using direct visible-light imaging. The strange world is far-flung from its parent star, is surrounded by a colossal belt of gas and dust, and may even have rings more impressive than Saturn's. --- Subscribe to Science & Reason: • http://www.YouTube.com/Best0fScience • http://www.YouTube.com/ScienceMagazine • http://www.YouTube.com/ScienceTV • http://www.YouTube.com/FFreeThinker --- Credit: - ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen) - Visual design & Editing: Martin Kornmesser - Animations: Martin Kornmesser & Luis Calçada - Web Hosting: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum (LRZ) - Web Technical Support: Lars Holm Nielsen & Raquel Yumi Shida - Written by: Lee Pullen & Lars Lindberg Christensen - Host: Dr. J - Narration: Bob Fosbury - Cinematography: Peter Rixner - Music: movetwo - Footage and photos: A. Fujii, Digitized Sky Survey 2, NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley). Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble) - Directed by: Lars Lindberg Christensen Dr. J is a German astronomer at the ESO. His scientific interests are in cosmology, particularly on galaxy evolution and quasars. Dr. J's real name is Joe Liske and he has a PhD in astronomy. Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre Garching/Munich, Germany • http://www.eso.org • http://www.spacetelescope.org • http://hubblesite.org .
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Added: 2249 days ago by
deek
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