“Hot Jupiters” are lonely

63 Hot Jupiter Canridates. CREDIT: Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics

A group of scientist including UF astronomy professor Eric Ford has recently conducted a search for planets around stars already known to host “hot Jupiter” type planets, showing that these bodies are most likely to be alone in their systems.

“Hot Jupiters” are giant planets beyond our solar system, roughly the size of Jupiter orbiting very close to their parent stars and thus much hotter than the Earth or Jupiter (hence the name). They have very short orbital periods, completing a turn around their stars in less than 10 days. This study provides new insights into how they are formed.

The data used was gathered by NASA’s planet-hunter Kepler mission, which uses a 1-meter space telescope to stare constantly at a patch of the Milky Way, registering the small decreases in the light from stars caused when a planet crosses in front of it.

Scientists dug into Kepler’s data and selected a sample of 63 planetary systems containing previously detected hot Jupiter candidates. Then they looked for signals of additional planets either crossing in front of the host stars or gravitationally tugging on the hot Jupiter’s orbit. In all cases they found no evidence of additional planets. To allow comparisons, they used the same methods to study a sample of “warm Jupiter” candidates, equally big planets but located farther away from their parent stars and “hot Neptunes,” smaller but closer to the stars. They found compelling evidence that at least 10 percent of the warm Jupiters and one third of the hot Neptunes have other planetary companions nearby in the system. Thus, why are all the hot Jupiters so lonely?

Astronomers believe it results from the way the hot Jupiters are formed, now thought to be different from most other planets. Current models suggest that they are probably formed farther away from their host star, and then gravitational interactions with another body cause their orbits to become highly elongated. Each orbit the hot Jupiter passes very close to the host star and then travels far away. The star raises tides on the planet, repeatedly stretching it and causing its orbit to become smaller and more circular. This process would remove or destroy other low-mass planets that originally formed between the star and the giant planet.

“We looked for companion planets near hot Jupiters in order to learn a bit more about their formation,” Ford said. “The lack of nearby planets supports the theory that a close encounter with another body in the system caused the elongation of the orbit. When a giant planet repeatedly passes through the inner regions of a planetary system on an elongated orbit, it would wreak great havoc on any planets that had formed there. The other planets would either fall into the star, collide with the hot Jupiter or be kicked out of the system via a gravitational slingshot.”

In 1995 the first planet orbiting a sun-like star was discovered. It and most exoplanets found in the early days of the exoplanet search happened to be hot Jupiters.

“That was because they are easier to find than smaller planets or others more distant to their host star,” Ford said. “Now, we know that less than 1 percent of stars harbor hot Jupiters, so they are relatively rare. A special sequence of events like strong gravitational interactions between two giant planets followed by tidal circularization seems to be the most plausible scenario for the formation of hot Jupiters.”

The research was led by Jason Steffen from the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophisics.

NASA’s Kepler Mission, operating since 2009, is revolutionizing the field of planetary science. For the first time it is enabling astronomers to conduct this kind of detailed population studies of planet candidates. By allowing astronomers to study systems other than our own, they are able to confront planet formation theories with observational data, giving important insights into the range of contemporary planetary system architectures and the possible existence of habitable planets within them.

Link to UF news http://news.ufl.edu/2012/05/07/hot-jupiters/

UF participates in nation’s largest science and technology festival

2010 Edition UF's participants, in front of their booth 

 

The University of Florida’s departments of astronomy, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and the Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences will participate in the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., Saturday and Sunday.

The theme of the UF booth is “Gators in Space,” where displays and interactive activities will be used to explain how astronomy and engineering allow a better understanding of the universe and life on Earth.

At the UF booth, Expo visitors will have the opportunity to build their own working telescopes, experience the physical principles needed to control a spacecraft, and handle samples of simulated Lunar and Martian regolith (planetary “soil”) and the palm-sized plant system launched to the International Space Station.

Static and dynamic displays will show how the university is using cutting-edge science and technology to provide solutions to challenges that the world is facing. The booth will have displays of the hardware used for the exploration of space: SwampSat, the first 4-inch-cubed satellite designed and built at UF; a scale model of the Gran Telescopio Canarias, the world’s largest telescope, used by UF astronomers for their research; an orbital plant growth facility and a clinostat (ground-based hardware used to disrupt the effect of gravity sensing in biology). Students and researchers will be available to demonstrate and discuss each of these items.

The USA Science & Engineering Festival is the country’s only national science festival. Its aim is to increase the public’s awareness of the importance of science and to encourage youths to pursue careers in science and engineering. The fair is a month-long celebration, culminating in a two-day exposition including 100 live performances and 3,000 different hands-on activities by more than 500 of the nation’s leading science and engineering organizations. It is free and open to the public.

“The previous Expo held in October of 2010 was a celebration of science; we had many visitors attending the UF booth, including a number of UF alumni. They were very impressed with the kinds of science and engineering projects that were coming out of their alma mater,” said Ata Sarajedini, professor of astronomy who is the overall coordinator of the UF group.

“We have created an official twitter @GatorsinSpace so people can follow all of our activities,” said Dante Buckley, a participating UF engineering doctoral student who is also a member of professor Norman Fitz-Coy’s SwampSat team.

Eric Schultz, an IFAS doctoral student in the space biology program of Robert Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul, is excited about the opportunity to show visitors advances in biological research in space, “This is a great opportunity to promote interest in the biological sciences and to educate the public about the benefits of astrobiology and extraterrestrial research in general,” Schultz said.

The following video was aired by the local news, before last expo's edition.

The participation of UF at this festival has been made possible by the UF provost’s office, department of astronomy, Florida Space Grant Consortium, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and the Office of Admissions.

UF-led team use new observatory to characterize low-mass planets orbiting a nearby star

Published in University of Florida News on Thursday, April 9, 2012.

The narrow dust ring around Fomalhaut. Yellow at top is the ALMA image, and the blue at bottom is Hubble Space Telescope image. The star is at the location of the bright emission at the center of the ring.

CREDIT: A.C. Boley (University of Florida, Sagan Fellow), M.J. Payne, E.B. Ford, M. Shabran (UF), S. Corder (North American ALMA Science Center, NRAO), and W. Dent (ALMA, Chile), NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (UC, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

University of Florida astronomers have found compelling evidence for two low-mass planets orbiting the nearby star Fomalhaut, just 25 light years from Earth.

Twice as massive as the sun and 20 times brighter, Fomalhaut is surrounded by a ring of dust and debris, making it a favorite system for astronomers to study and a natural laboratory for testing planet formation theories.

In 2008, images of Fomalhaut taken by the Hubble Space Telescope led to the discovery of “Fomalhaut b,” the first extrasolar planet to be directly detected in visible light. At the time, astronomers believed it to be a giant planet, akin to Jupiter or Saturn, but later infrared images failed to detect the planet, meaning that it had to be smaller than Saturn.

UF astronomers, along with scientists from the new Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile, known as ALMA, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, used ALMA’s superior resolution and sensitivity to study the system in unprecedented detail. Their results indicate that there are not one, but two planets, with masses between that of Mars and a few times larger than Earth, working together to shape the ring of dust.

The new study reveals that the ring is sharply truncated in the inner and outer edges and is only about 16 astronomical units, or AU, wide, or about 16 times the distance between the Earth and the sun. That may seem large, but the center of the ring is about 140 AU, making the ring relatively very narrow. It also finds that the ring is vertically thin, about one-seventh as tall as it is wide. Those properties give important clues to explain the planetary system of Fomalhaut.

The results are described in a paper to appear this month in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“Combining ALMA observations of the ring’s shape with computer models, we can place very tight limits on the mass and orbit of any planet near the ring.” said Aaron Boley, a Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at UF and leader of the study. “The masses of the planets must be small so they do not destroy the ring, but their masses cannot be too low or they would not shape the ring.”

Although Fomalhaut is a much hotter star than the sun, the planets are so far from their host star that they are among the coldest planets known around a normal star. They are thought to be low-mass bodies, but astronomers do not have enough data to tell whether they have a significant amount of hydrogen gas or are mostly rock and ice.

“ALMA observations show that Fomalhaut’s ring is even more narrow and thinner than previously known,” said Matthew Payne, an astronomer at the University of Florida who contributed to the study. “Fomalhaut b alone only explains the ring's sharp inner edge. Our analysis suggests that two planets, one interior and one exterior, are shepherding the ring, analogous to how Uranus’ moons Cordelia and Ophelia confine Uranus’ brightest ring.”

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO). Visible light image: the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope A. Fujii/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble). Music: John Dyson (from the album Moonwind).

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, located in the Atacama desert of northern Chile at an altitude of 16,400 feet is the largest astronomical project in existence. Still under construction, ALMA began scientific operations in September.

“ALMA may still be under construction, but it has already proved to be the world’s most powerful telescope for observing the universe at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths of light.” said Stuartt Corder, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and co-author of the study.

“Once ALMA is completed, we will be able to study systems like Fomalhaut with even greater detail, and see through the veil of dust that hides the early stages of planet formation,” said co-author Bill Dent, an astronomer at ALMA.

This research was supported by the NASA Sagan Fellowship Program, the National Radio Astronomy Student Observing Support Program and the University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The Joint ALMA Observatory is a partnership of the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (on behalf of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences and Academia Sinica), and the NRAO (managed by Associated Universities, Inc. on behalf of the NSF and the National Research Council of Canada) in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.

CanariCam is ready for science!

CanariCam, the infrared instrument onboard the world’s biggest optical-infrared telescope is officially ready for scientific research.

The instrument was built in UF by a team of astronomers and engineers led by astronomy professor Charles Telesco. Basically, it's a high-tech, heat-sensitive camera that will allow researchers to look for planets outside our own solar system and better explore hidden black holes at the centers of galaxies, among other tasks.

The Great Telescope CANARIAS, also known as GTC is the biggest optical-infrared telescope in the world, with a primary mirror of 10.4 meters (34.12 feet). The unique specifications of CanariCam, combined with this mighty telescope, form a cutting-edge scientific tool.

University of Florida is a 5% partner in the GTC, in operation since 2009. UF is developing and using instruments such as CanariCam to maximize the telescope’s scientific productivity for all the scientific community. In return, the University of Florida gets observation time for its own projects.

CanariCam capabilities include high-resolution imaging, spectrography, coronography and polarimetry. The latter is an exclusive feature in 8 to 10 meter class telescopes. This is a unique combination in a single instrument, according to professor Telesco.

“With this instrument, the GTC will allow projects impossible to do with other smaller telescopes and will be in the forefront of infrared astronomy for a very long time.” Telesco said.

Some bodies or regions of the universe emit infrared radiation, or heat, which is detected by CanariCam. This capability will spearhead research exploring planets outside our solar system and regions where planets and stars are forming. Also, the fact that infrared radiation can pierce easily cosmic dust clouds means that CanariCam would be able to see objects that are totally obscured at visible wavelengths.

Call for applications for IScAI 2012

IScAI Students visit the Gran Telescopio Canarias
 (Photo: Consolider-GTC)

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and partner institutions announce the 2012 edition of the International School for Advanced Instrumentation or IScAI, an international collaboration between universities, research centers and technologic companies with the goal of offering astronomers, physicists and engineers specialised formation in all areas related with the designs and building of cutting-edge scientific instrumentation.

The programme consists of five weeks of intensive course work on five different subjects related to the design and construction of astronomical instrumentation. Each one imparted by top professors on its field: in optics, Steve Eikenberry from University of Florida; in mechanics, Manuel Maldonado (FRACTAL S.L.N.E); in software, Nicolas Carfiel (Universidad Complutense de Madrid); in electronics, Enrique Joven (IAC); and in management Marisa García Vargas (FRACTAL S.L.N.E).

After the theoretical lessons, students can opt to a hands-on period in institutions or companies related to the school, working in world-class instrumentation programs.

These will be held at the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, in La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands. The IScAI will start in May 2012 and is open to astronomers, physicists and engineers worldwide. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2012.

IScAI founding institutions are Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain), University of Florida (USA), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica de México (Mexico) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico). Other institutions have joined like Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, and Centro de Astrobiología (Spain). Also the companies EADS Astrium Crisa, Fractal SLNE, GMV, IDOM, LIDAX, y NTE-Sener.

The IScAI 2012 is funded by the grant "First Science with the GTC", under the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

For more information about the IScAI and the registration procedure, please check the school’s web site at: http://iscai.iac.es

UF astronomers contribute to NASA’s planet discoveries

Published on University of Florida News on Thursday, January 26, 2012.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — NASA announced today the discovery of 11 new “solar systems” hosting at least 26 planets found with data from NASA’s Kepler Mission.

Kepler's Planetary Systems, Jan. 2012 Multiple planet systems discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. Newly found planets are shown here in green. The eight planets of the solar system are shown in blue. Credit: NASA Ames/Jason Steffen, Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics

The discovery nearly doubles the number of verified Kepler planets so far. It also triples the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits – or passes in front of — its host star. Such systems are particularly valuable for the clues they provide about how planets form.

Eric B. Ford, associate professor of the astronomy department at the University of Florida, is part of the Kepler Mission science team. Ford’s research group at UF, including graduate student Robert Morehead and postdoctoral associate Althea Moorhead, has contributed to several previous Kepler discoveries. Ford is lead author of the paper describing Kepler-23 and Kepler-24, two of the 11 systems announced today.

In this research, Ford and his team not only describe the two new planetary systems but also develop a new technique that, in Ford’s words “dramatically accelerates planet discovery and will enable astronomers to confirm planets transiting fainter and more distant stars.”

The Kepler Mission uses a 1-meter space telescope to stare constantly at a patch of the Milky Way, registering the small decreases in the light from stars caused when a planet crosses in front of it. With this tool, astronomers are able to constantly monitor more than 160,000 stars at a time.

Until now, confirming that small decreases in a star’s brightness was caused by a planet required additional observations and time-consuming analysis. The new technique takes advantage of the gravitational effects that different planets in a system have on each other’s orbits. By precisely timing the deviations from the expected orbital times caused by this effect, the team was able to detect the gravitational tug exerted by the planets on each other, and confirm 10 of the newly announced planetary systems.

Five of the new planetary systems contain a pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer planet. Another five systems contain a pair of planets where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet orbits its star.

“These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets, similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher,” said Jason Steffen, the Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow at Fermilab Center for Astroparticle Physics and lead author of a paper confirming four of the systems.

The new planets orbit close to their host stars, their size ranging from 1.7 times the radius of Earth to about the size of Jupiter. Fifteen of them are smaller than Neptune and further observations will be required to determine which of them are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The confirmed planets orbit their host star once every 6 to 143 days, so all of them are closer to their host star than Venus is to the sun.

The new discoveries will be published in the Astrophysical Journal and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Searching for exoplanets using real Kepler data is open to everyone by visiting planethunters.org. For more information about the Kepler mission visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.

NASA‘s Kepler mission and UF astronomer find two new planets orbiting double suns

Published on UF News, January 11th 2012.

Using data from NASA’s Kepler mission, a team that includes a University of Florida astronomer has discovered two new planets orbiting double star systems, something that had never been seen until last September.

The newly confirmed planets, called Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b, will be announced in Wednesday’s online edition of the journal Nature, said Eric B. Ford, UF associate professor of astronomy. William F. Welsh, associate professor at San Diego State University, is the lead author on the paper.

An artist's rendition of the Kepler-35 planetary system, in which a Saturn-size planet orbits a pair of stars.
Image credit: Lynette Cook / extrasolar.spaceart.org

Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b both orbit a “binary star.” They are actually a pair of gravitationally bound stars that orbit each other. While the existence of such bodies, called “circumbinary planets,” had long been predicted, they remained just a theory until the team discovered Kepler-16b in September 2011. They dubbed Kepler-16b “Tatooine” because of its resemblance to the two-sun world depicted in the “Star Wars” film series.

“We have long believed these kinds of planets to be possible, but they have been very difficult to detect for various technical reasons,” Ford said. “With the discoveries of Kepler-16b, 34b and 35b, the Kepler mission has shown that the galaxy abounds with millions of planets orbiting two stars.”

The planets were discovered by measuring the star light decrease as the planets pass in front of, or transit, either of the two stars. Kepler also measures the star light decrease when one of the stars passes in front of the other. The mutual gravitational tugs of the stars and planets cause the times of the transits to deviate from a regular schedule, allowing astronomers to confirm the planet and measure its mass.

Both planets are low-density gas giants, comparable in size to Jupiter, but much less massive. Compared to Jupiter, Kepler-34 is about 24 percent smaller in size, but has 78 percent less mass. It can complete a full orbit in 288 terrestrial days. Kepler-35 is about 26 percent smaller, has 88 percent less mass, and completes its orbit around the stars much faster – just 131 days.

The astronomers believe the planets are made primarily of hydrogen and too hot to sustain life.

“Circumbinary planets can have much more complex climates, since the distance between the planet and each star change significantly during each orbital period, the length of an alien planet’s year,” Ford said. “For Kepler-35b, the amount of incoming star light changes by over 50 percent within a single Earth year. For Kepler-34b, each Earth-year brings ‘summers’ with 2.3 times as much star light as winters. Over the course of a year, the change in the amount of sunlight heating the Earth varies by only 6 percent.”

NASA’s Kepler mission, which began in March 2009, uses a 1-meter space telescope trained on one small portion of the Milky Way for several years. Astronomers analyze data from the telescope for periodic dimming that indicates a planet crossing in front of its host star. The mission’s goal is to find the frequency of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of their host stars – where a planet might have liquid water on its surface.

Most Sun-like stars in the galaxy are not alone, like the Earth’s sun, but have a “dance partner,” forming a binary system or binary star. Kepler has already identified about 2,165 eclipsing binaries, of the more than 160,000 stars being observed.

NASA originally planned to stop receiving data from the Kepler spacecraft in November 2012.

“Astronomers are practically begging NASA to extend the Kepler mission until 2016, so it can characterize the masses and orbits of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone. Kepler is revolutionizing so many fields, not just planetary science,” Ford said. “It would be a shame not to maximize the scientific return of this great observatory. Hopefully common sense will prevail and the mission will continue.”

The public can contribute to searching for planets using real Kepler data by visiting planethunters.org, which works with the latest versión of Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. For additional information, downloadable slides, and full resolution versions of artwork after the embargo lifts, please see http://sdsu.edu/kepler. For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.

Follow this link to see the original UF press release.

More than one thousand people gather to discover the universe on Starry Night.

The weather was benignant and a clear sky allowed around eleven hundred all-aged humans to peer trough the telescopes and attend the talks and activities displayed last Thursday at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

“FLMNH photo by Kristen Grace.”

Starry Night is an annual event aimed to get earthly intelligent creatures to be more interested in space. The event is sponsored by UF astronomy department, the Museum of Natural History, the Alachua Astronomy Club and Santa Fe College, also supported by NSF and NASA.

“FLMNH
 photo by Kristen Grace.”

Many telescopes of different types, including a few home-made, where displayed outside the museum where visitors enjoyed great views of the Moon, Jupiter and the stars.

Among the presentations, the portable planetarium was extremelly succesful, inflated to give a show on constellations, so popular that free tickets ran out in some cases more than an hour before the show.

“FLMNH photo by Kristen Grace.”

The 3D-show hosted by Robert Morehead and the “astronomy tools” demonstration carried on by Prof Stephen Eikenberry, both of them unleashing their inner showmen, made the delights of children and grown ups, specially when fruit and other vegetables were frozen using liquid nitrogen and afterwards used to hammer nails or shattered like glass, to the general amazement.

One of the more expected events was the lecture given by Dr. Michael Mumma, Director of the Goddard Center for astrobiology about the search for life in Mars.

Thanks to the Florida Museum of Natural History and the photographer for all the nice pictures. You can see the full galery on the museum's facebook page.

See you next year!

Children enjoy as stuff gets frozen.
"FLMNH photo by Kristen Grace.”

Dr. Michael Mumma amazes the audience
“FLMNH photo by Kristen Grace.”

Making Galaxies
“FLMNH photo by Kristen Grace.”

Meteorites!
“FLMNH photo by Kristen Grace.”

Discovery by UF-led team refutes previous theory about galaxies

The world’s largest optical telescope has allowed University of Florida astronomers to see new details about deep space galaxies, finding new clues to explain the evolution of galaxies like our own.

Before these new observations, it was believed that galaxies in the young universe were much denser and compact than they are now, undergoing at some point a mysterious transformation growing in size and mass. Astronomers around the world struggled to find an explanation.

Now, a UF-led team has used the Gran Telescopio Canarias, or GTC, to point out the solution to the mystery: The data gathered by lesser telescopes was not accurate enough, which led to misinterpretation.

The GTC in Spain’s Canary Islands has a primary mirror of 10.4 meters, or 27.6 feet, which allowed the team led by UF graduate student Jesus Martinez and professor Rafael Guzman, to observe four of these dense galaxies with a level of detail unachieved so far. They found that the four were six times less massive, on average, than previously believed, as described in the September issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

It takes time for light to travel through the universe. Considering the great distances the light must travel to get to Earth, looking through larger telescopes means not only being able to see farther in distance, but also back in time — in this case 9 billion years ago.

Martinez and teammates from Spanish research centers Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias and Universidad Complutense de Madrid, concluded that what had been thought of as super-dense galaxies actually were not so dense and had not undergone dramatic transformation — a discovery that shows how scientists must always question previously accepted principles.

Cutting-edge scientific tools such as the GTC help bolster this kind of healthy scepticism.

UF is a 5 percent partner in the $180 million GTC, which was inaugurated in 2009

Martinez’s work has been partially funded by a UF alumni fellowship and the government of Spain’s Consolider-Ingenio 2010 program.

Javier Barbuzano.

What's cool about this?

Most people think that only by making a really big finding (or winning the Nobel price) scientists can get some attention from the public. This statement can't be more far from reality. The audience is way more interested in science and its wrappings that one could think. Not only discoveries, but also development of new instrumentation, new research projects and the challenges of research itself are things that powerfully attract people's curiosity.

Last week we sent a press release about the commissioning of Canaricam. This isn't a new discovery (yet), but just some piece of scientific work, with the glamour of being a new instrument in the world's biggest telescope, the GTC.

Probably the key words were “new” and “big,” but it happened that we got the attention of EFE agency, one of the greatest news agencies in Spanish. They translated and published our release. The consequence: an spreading wider than expected.

Here are some places where it got published: (based on google search)

Europe:

Euronews

Spain:

Madridmas, ADN, Diario de avisos, El Dia, Canarias 7

Mexico:

Milenio Mexico, El universal, SPD noticias, El observador

Venezuela:

El Universal Caracas, Union Radio Venezuela

Bolivia:

La Opinion

Costa Rica:

El Pais de Costa Rica

USA:

RD mag, Capital Soup (Florida), Telemundo33 San Diego

Javier Barbuzano

Stars Shine on East Gainesville

As part of an ongoing effort to reach out to the community, the University of Florida Music and Arts for Science Outreach Initiative in the Department of Astronomy is hosting “Stars Shine on East Gainesville,” a celebration of art, science and culture, from 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. Friday October 8 at the Martin Luther King Center (1028 NE 14th St). The event is free and open to the public.

Participants will be able to view the night sky with telescopes, participate in art projects, and learn about the ASTREC small satellite project. Pizza and soda will be available for purchase. Other events include:

6:30 pm at the Northeast Pool: Gainesville Gaviatas Synchronized Swimming will present The Art & Science of Conservation of Motion

Following at the MLK Center:
Jorge Variego, Music From Space: Black holes, Planets, Light Waves
Performance by the Howard Bishop Symphonic Winds
Astro Art Exhibit from the East Gainesville Initiative Summer Camp Students and award ceremony with Dr Jaydeep Mukherjee.
NASA Hands on activities outreach group from Kennedy Space Center.

Sponsored by: The National Science Foundation through a grant to Stephen Eikenberry and Reba Bandyopadhyay in the Department of Astronomy; NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium, University of Florida Music and Arts for Science, ASTREC, Gainesville Gaviatas, UF School of Music: College of Fine Arts, and Cotton Club. Partnering With: Santa Fe College East Gainesville Initiative, and the Alachua Astronomy Club.

Rosemary Reborn: Students Upgrade the 30" Telescope at Rosemary Hill Observatory

Phase 1 of a student-led project to upgrade the instrument package on the 30-inch Rosemary Hill Observatory telescope is nearly completed.

Led by a Sigma Xi Grant In Aid of Research awarded to UF graduate student Scott Fleming, and working alongside Dr. Francisco Reyes, Amanda Townsend, Dr. Anthony Gonzalez, Dr. John Oliver, Robert Morehead, Nathan De Lee and Dr. Eric Ford, a new SBIG ST8X-ME CCD, a new 10-filter filter wheel, and a new set of Johnson-Cousins filters has been successfully installed.

The ST8X-ME also includes a second built-in detector that allows the CCD to auto-guide itself, maintaining image position and allowing for long integrations and stable sequences of multiple exposures. The new CCD has a significantly larger field of view compared to the previous camera, 15.6 x 10.4 arcminutes. The new camera will be used by undergraduate students to conduct research projects as part of the Observational Techniques class this semester. It will also be used by graduate students and professors to conduct research projects locally.

The attached image is a "first light", three-color image of the M13 globular cluster, observed by Dr. Reyes and Amanda Townsend, and created by Amanda Townsend. No calibration data was taken for this first light image, which is the reason for the noisier-than-usual background.

The quality of this rough image is a sign of great things to come from the new 30-inch instrument package. Better images taken with a full set of calibration data and processing will be shared in the near future after some additional tests are done with the instruments this month.

UF Astronomy professor is invited speaker at American Astronomical Society meeting in Miami

Professor Ata Sarajedini of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Florida was invited to speak at a plenary session during the semi-annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting held in Miami, Florida on May 23-27, 2010. Sarajedini's talk was entitled "A Guided Tour of Globular Clusters in the Local Group."

As with all guided tours, the person in charge of leading the group shows and describes the most interesting sights available to the tour group. Sarajedini's talk was no different - focusing on the most exciting research in the area of Local Group globular clusters. Along these lines, the multiple stellar populations being discovered in several Milky Way globular clusters was one topic covered in this talk. The conclusion of the presentation emphasized the broad foundation of evidence in favor of the theory that large galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda are built through a process of disruption and ultimate destruction of smaller (dwarf) galaxies.

University of Florida Astronomer Calls on Congress to Support Investments in Research and Development

by Reba Bandyopadhyay

Reba Bandyopadhyay, Assistant Scientist at the University of Florida, traveled to Washington, DC, to express thanks and appreciation to Congress for recent appropriations actions in the FY2010 spending bill in support of science, engineering, and technology research and development (R&D).
Dr. Bandyopadhyay joined with more than 250 scientists, engineers, and business leaders who made visits on Capitol Hill as part of the 15th annual Congressional Visits Day, sponsored by the Science-Engineering-Technology Work Group (www.setcvd.org), on April 28-29. She was one of 16 members of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) who traveled to Washington for the event.

While visiting congressional offices, CVD participants discussed the importance of the nation’s broad portfolio of investments in science, engineering, and technology to promoting U.S. prosperity and innovation. Most importantly, they provided a constituent perspective on the local and national impact of these programs and their significance to Florida. Dr. Bandyopadhyay visited the offices of Senators Bill Nelson and George LeMieux and Representatives Corrine Brown and Cliff Stearns, speaking to staffers for each Congressperson about the importance of federal funding for science R&D. She spoke specifically about ground- and space-based astronomical instrumentation development currently underway at UF, and how such work can help to build Florida’s “knowledge economy”.

“I was very pleased to participate in Congressional Visits Day. I believe that discussing the benefits of federal science and technology programs in person with our elected legislators is critical to securing the ongoing support of agencies such as NSF and NASA. The technology arising from the research in these federal agencies is central America’s competitiveness in the world economy.”

More than 50% of all industrial innovation and growth in the United States since World War II can be attributed to advances pioneered through scientific research, with publicly funded R&D the vital foundation for today’s scientific and technological progress. Achievements from federally funded science, engineering, and technology include global environmental monitoring, lasers, liquid crystal displays, the Internet, and many other scientific and technical advances.

The federal government supports a unique research and education enterprise that fuels the American economy. This enterprise provides the underpinning of high-technology industries and expands the frontiers of knowledge in every field of science. Much of this research is carried out at academic institutions across the country, ensuring knowledge transfer to future generations of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, physicians, and teachers. Additionally, technology transfer from academic research adds billions of dollars to the economy each year and supports tens of thousands of jobs.

Dr. Bandyopadhyay said that her most memorable experience was visiting the offices of Florida’s two Senators. “I was impressed with the interest in and knowledge about science and technology research shown by the staff members of both Senators Nelson and LeMieux. They clearly understood the importance of R&D to Florida, and how federal funding is vital to such research in our public universities and NASA.”

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The Science-Engineering-Technology Work Group is an information network comprising professional, scientific, and engineering societies, institutions of higher learning, and trade associations. The sponsors represent more than a million researchers and professionals in science and engineering. The Work Group is concerned about the future vitality of the U.S. science, mathematics, and engineering enterprise.

More information about 2010 Congressional Visits Day can be found at on the Web: http://www.setcvd.org

Astronomers plan second look at mega star birthing grounds

via University of Florida News

Astronomers this summer will take a close look at a rare cosmic cradle for the universe’s largest stars, baby bruisers that grow up to have 50 times the sun’s mass.

The international team of astronomers headed by University of Florida scientist Peter Barnes used an Australian radio telescope to find the cloud of gas and dust 8,000 light years away in the Southern sky constellation Carina. The cloud is in the early stages of collapsing in on itself, offering astronomers an unusual vista on the first contractions of behemoth star birth.

“We understand some of it, but we really don’t have a clear picture of what’s important,” Barnes said. “This should help us learn a lot more about the process.”

Although our sun has far less mass than the incipient stars in the gas cloud, studying their formation could help astronomers understand how our solar system formed, Barnes said. That is because many stars the size of our sun are thought to have formed in clusters that dispersed into space over millions of years. It’s possible, Barnes said, that our sun traces its origin to such a cluster, and in fact chemical anomalies on meteorites suggest that’s the case.

The latest findings, which appeared in the monthly journal Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, have spurred the team to plan a closer look with another Australian telescope in August. The team will also use the Gemini South telescope, equipped with a mid-infrared camera designed and built at UF, to observe the cloud from the telescope’s location in Chile.

Stars at least 10 times the mass of our sun are rare, comprising only about 4 percent of those in the universe. Most are also at least 1,000 light years away and hard to study. It’s exceptionally rare for astronomers to encounter clouds of gas and dust early in the process of collapsing into large stars because the stars tend to destroy their natal origins.

“They’re rather nasty tykes,” Barnes said. “They make a big mess.”

The astronomers discovered the gas cloud as part of a survey of 300 large gas clouds using the Australia Telescope National Facility’s 22-meter Mopra radio telescope in southeastern Australia. The telescope’s world-class spectrometer allows astronomers to identify and image carbon monoxide and other molecules in large gas clouds. Even with that technology, the mega star birthing cloud was the only one of its kind among the 300 surveyed.

The cloud is also unusual in its rapid pace of collapse and the amount of dust and gas, an amount so large it eclipsed the large stars that had already coalesced inside the cloud. “It is a few light years across, and it has maybe 20,000 times the sun’s mass worth of gas and dust, and most of that is participating in the collapse,” Barnes said.

Shuttle Launch

by Francisco Reyes

An amazing view of the launch of the Discovery shuttle, mission STS-131!

The video recording was made from the roof of the Astronomy building at the University of Florida Campus in Gainesville, FL.

Like many other people, I was expecting the "exciting" part of the launch to end after the separation of the solid rocket boosters. Normally the shuttle main engines get faint after the separation, but about a minute after separation they became brighter and a comet-like cloud began to form around the shuttle. I have seen several night launch and this is the first in which I saw this effect. According to NASA sources, it was the illumination of the exhaust plume of the shuttle engines by the rising sun, rapidly expanding due to the low pressure and density of the atmosphere at that altitude.

An spectacular view that will remain in our memories of one of the last flights of the shuttle!

Life in the Universe

Five scientists consider the formation and evolution of worlds and life, through a public roundtable discussion this Friday in UF's New Physics Building 1001. Three professors from UF's Geological Sciences, Physics, and Astronomy Departments are joining two scientists from the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution to consider: "Life in the Universe?"

Some questions to be discussed include: How do we think habitable worlds form and evolve? How might living systems emerge from these worlds? And, where else might biogenesis have occurred in our own Solar System?

The panel will consider questions from the audience throughout this event, which lasts from seven to eight o'clock in the evening.

Panel speakers include Dr. Steven Benner, who's laboratory has pioneered synthetic biology research, and who wrote the critically-acclaimed book "Life, the Universe, and the Scientific Method" and coauthored the NAP report "The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems;" Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, who studies earth history and life through organic geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and geomicrobiology; Dr. Katia Matcheva, who investigates the physics and chemistry of planet atmospheres through study of NASA space missions to Jupiter, Saturn and Mars; Dr. Stephen Gottesman, who has expertise in galactic structure and dynamics, and currently teaches the Astronomy Honors Life in the Universe course; and Dr. Matthew Carrigan, who is researching the origin of life by study of molecular evolution.

This event is hosted by the Undergraduate Astrophysics Society (UAS) in partnership with SPS. Our goal is to create an intellectually engaging environment that both experts and beginners can enjoy.

image credit: Undergraduate Astronomy Association

Our Cosmic History: From Big Bang to Big Molecules

Join the Department of Astronomy at the University of Florida in an evening of astronomical discovery next Friday, April 9th, 2010 in the New Physics Building starting at 6:30pm. The event will include public lectures by Professor Mordecai-Mark Mac Low (National Museum of Natural History and Columbia University) and Professor Paola Caselli (University of Leeds).


image credit: Jonathan Tan

Redesign

After a couple of months of work, and thanks to everyone's involvement, our department is happy to announce the launch of its new redesigned site, a site aimed to increase the impact of our presence in the world wide web.

Along with this release comes this blog, aimed to keep our followers up to date on everything related to the professional endeavors of our department and its members, with news, announcements, and stories that will please everyone with an interest in astronomy in general, and our department in particular.

Stay tuned for many more things to come in the near future.