The European Space Agency has released its image of the month for January, and it is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a stunning shot from the Webb Space Telescope.
At the bottom of the image is LEDA 2046648, a spiral galaxy over one billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules. Behind LEDA is a field of more distant galaxies, ranging from spiral shapes to pinpricks of light in the distant universe.
Webb launched from French Guiana in December 2021; its scientific observations of the cosmos began in July. Webb has imaged distant galaxies, exoplanets, and even shed new light on worlds in our local solar system.
Though this image was only just released, it was taken during the commissioning process for one of Webb’s instruments, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), according to an ESA release. While NIRISS was focused on a white dwarf—the core remnant of a star—Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) turned its focus to LEDA 2046648 and its environs in the night sky.
One of Webb’s primary objectives in looking at the distant universe is to better understand how the first stars and galaxies formed. To that end, the telescope is looking at some of the most ancient light in the universe, primarily through its instruments NIRCam and MIRI.
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The image does contains hundreds of light sources our eye can perceive, but the infrared data from which the image was formed certainly records many more galaxies.
Webb’s deep field imagery is what enables scientists to see some of the most ancient light in the universe, often capitalizing on gravitational lensing (the magnification of distant light due to the gravitational warping of spacetime) to see particularly ancient sources.
Though this shot of LEDA 2046648 is not a deep field, it evokes a similar feeling: awe, at the huge scale of the cosmos, and (if only briefly) the realization that our minds can only comprehend a fraction of it.
More: Zoom in on Webb Telescope’s Biggest Image Yet
The European Space Agency has released its image of the month for January, and it is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a stunning shot from the Webb Space Telescope.
At the bottom of the image is LEDA 2046648, a spiral galaxy over one billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules. Behind LEDA is a field of more distant galaxies, ranging from spiral shapes to pinpricks of light in the distant universe.
Read more
Webb launched from French Guiana in December 2021; its scientific observations of the cosmos began in July. Webb has imaged distant galaxies, exoplanets, and even shed new light on worlds in our local solar system.
Though this image was only just released, it was taken during the commissioning process for one of Webb’s instruments, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), according to an ESA release. While NIRISS was focused on a white dwarf—the core remnant of a star—Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) turned its focus to LEDA 2046648 and its environs in the night sky.
One of Webb’s primary objectives in looking at the distant universe is to better understand how the first stars and galaxies formed. To that end, the telescope is looking at some of the most ancient light in the universe, primarily through its instruments NIRCam and MIRI.
The image does contains hundreds of light sources our eye can perceive, but the infrared data from which the image was formed certainly records many more galaxies.
Webb’s deep field imagery is what enables scientists to see some of the most ancient light in the universe, often capitalizing on gravitational lensing (the magnification of distant light due to the gravitational warping of spacetime) to see particularly ancient sources.
Though this shot of LEDA 2046648 is not a deep field, it evokes a similar feeling: awe, at the huge scale of the cosmos, and (if only briefly) the realization that our minds can only comprehend a fraction of it.
More: Zoom in on Webb Telescope’s Biggest Image Yet
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NASA’s powerful $10 billion space telescope is firing on all cylinders again.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) returned to full science operations on Monday (Jan. 30), recovering from a glitch that affected one of its instruments.
The Webb team conducted days of testing and evaluation after a “communications delay” on Jan. 15 caused issues with the telescope’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument, according to a Tuesday (Jan. 31) statement (opens in new tab) from NASA.
“Observations that were impacted by the pause in NIRISS operations will be rescheduled,” said the agency in its brief statement, noting the instrument was recovered successfully on Friday (Jan. 27).
Related: James Webb Space Telescope’s best images of all time (gallery)
NIRISS was provided by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), so personnel from NASA and the CSA worked alongside one another for troubleshooting. The initial issue was a “communications delay within the instrument, causing its flight software to time out,” according to a Jan. 24 statement (opens in new tab) from NASA.
NIRISS can normally work in four different modes (opens in new tab), according to NASA. The instrument may be tasked with working as a camera when other JWST instruments are busy. Alternatively, NIRISS can look at light signatures of small exoplanet atmospheres, do high-contrast imaging or examine distant galaxies.
Prior to the NIRISS glitch, an issue arose on another Webb instrument in August 2022: a grating wheel inside the observatory’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The wheel is required for just one of MIRI’s four observing modes, however, so the instrument continued observing during recovery operations. Work on recovering the affected mode, called the Medium Resolution Spectrometer, was completed in November.
In December, the JWST team also spent two weeks dealing with a glitch that kept putting the telescope into safe mode, making science observations difficult. A software glitch in the observatory’s attitude control system was pinpointed as the issue, affecting the direction in which the telescope points. The observatory bounced back relatively quickly from that problem, resuming full science operations on Dec. 20.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
An astonishing blue spiral, spinning in a perfect “whirlpool,” was recently spotted in the night sky over Hawaii. But there’s no need to fear an alien invasion just yet.
The unearthly sight was caught by the Subaru Telescope at the summit of Maunakea on the Big Island of Hawaii. Shortly before 4:45 a.m. on Jan. 18, a small blue dot could be seen amid a blanket of stars. The dot rapidly expanded until it formed into a spinning mass with bright blue tendrils of light emanating from its center. It slowly disappeared over the course of about 15 minutes.
Scientists who help operate the telescope said the “mysterious whirlpool” was likely due to a SpaceX launch. “Earlier that day, the SpaceX launched a satellite into a medium-earth orbit,” the telescope’s YouTube channel posted. “We believe this phenomenon is related [to] its orbital deployment operation.”
Hours before across the country, SpaceX had launched a Falcon 9 GPS rocket from the U.S. Space Force’s station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX, which is owned by Elon Musk, has government contracts with the Space Force. According to Space.com, spirals have been seen in the sky after other SpaceX launches too. It may be because extra fuel is being vented from the craft.
The Subaru Telescope is operated jointly by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences. Because Maunakea’s summit is above the clouds and there isn’t much light pollution on the Hawaiian Islands, scientists can capture remarkably clear images of space; Hawaii officials allow countries across the globe to operate telescopes atop Maunakea. This week, professional and amateur astronomers alike will be watching for a rare green comet passing by Earth.
Holiday decorations may have come down already on Earth, but a nebula located 7,000 light-years away is keeping the festive spirit alive.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning image of a small region of Westerhout 5, also known as the Soul Nebula, glowing red. The suffusion of red light is caused by H-alpha emission, which happens when very energetic electrons within hydrogen atoms lose energy, causing the release of this distinctive red light, Hubble representatives wrote in a description of the image.
This red light also reveals a range of fascinating features, such as a so-called free-floating evaporating gaseous globule (frEGG). Seen as a dark, tadpole-shaped region in the upper center left of the image, this frEGG is officially named KAG2008 globule 13 and J025838.6+604259.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
The Soul Nebula, located 7,000 light-years from Earth, is infused with a red glow in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sahai)
This and other frEGGs belong to a special class of evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs), which occur in nebulas when energetic radiation from young, hot stars ionizes surrounding gas by stripping away electrons. This causes the gas to disperse away from those bright stars in a process called photoevaporation, which may help to halt star formation in nebulas.
In EGGs, the gas is so dense that this photoevaporation process happens much more slowly than it does in surrounding regions of gas. This slower photoevaporation and the protection of gas from dispersal allow gas to remain dense enough to collapse and form protostars, which eventually go on to become full-fledged stars. This means astronomers are interested in frEGGs and EGGs because they are the areas of nebulas where star birth may have once taken place.
Astronomers discovered the existence of EGGs only recently. A prominent example of these structures is located at the tips of the Pillars of Creation in a 1995 Hubble image of the nebula. frEGGs are an even newer find; they are distinct from EGGs because they are detached from surrounding gas, giving them a distinct tadpole-like shape.
The Soul Nebula is the partner of another nebula that will have its image widely shared as Valentine’s Day approaches: the Heart Nebula. Officially known as IC 1805, the massive cloud of gas and dust is so named because the glowing hydrogen content makes it resemble a pink heart. At 7,500 light-years away, the Heart Nebula can be snapped by amateur astrophotographers, making it one of the most commonly shared space images around Feb. 14.
The “Heart and Soul” nebula complex forms a vast star-forming region that spans 300 light-years, with the two nebulas joined by a bridge of gas. Both nebulas are packed with bright stars that are just a few million years old, veritable infants compared with our nearly 5 billion-year-old sun.
Scientists using NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope say they’ve been able to get a closer look at an asteroid that also hosts just the fifth ring system to be discovered in our solar system (the others circle Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune).
Astronomers initially discovered the rings in 2013 while watching Chariklo occult, or pass in front of, a distant star. To their surprise, two other smaller objects also appeared to pass in front of the background star for an instant. These turned out to be two thin rings around Chariklo.
In October 2022, Pablo Santos-Sanz, from Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain, used Webb to watch Chariklo occult a star once again.
The above video of the observations shows the star Gaia DR3 6873519665992128512 at the center and Chariklo passing in front of it as mere pixels, but NASA says a careful analysis of dips in the star’s brightness shows the rings were clearly detected once again.
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“As we delve deeper into the data… we also will explore the rings’ thickness, the sizes and colors of the ring particles and more,” Santos-Sanz explained in a statement.
So far, data suggests the rings could be made up of ice and other dark debris, probably the remnants of some ancient cosmic collision with the asteroid.
“Spectra from ground-based telescopes had hinted at this ice, but the exquisite quality of the Webb spectrum revealed the clear signature of crystalline ice for the first time,” Noemí Pinilla-Alonso, who led Webb’s spectroscopic observations of Chariklo, added.
Chariklo is a large asteroid at about 188 miles (302 kilometers) across, but it orbits the sun in the outer solar system, between Saturn and Uranus. Even with its size, it’s too far away for Webb to directly image the rings, making occultations the best way to study them for now.
Santos-Sanz is excited to see Webb’s advanced ability to study even small, distant objects in detail. Next up, he hopes to determine exactly how large the rings are and what they’re made up of.
“We hope to gain insight into why this small body even has rings at all,” he said, “and perhaps detect new fainter rings.”
More stars. More galaxies. More data on exoplanets. Deeper into the history of the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope rocked astronomy with its first major image release on July 11, 2022. Comparisons between Hubble Space Telescope and Webb views of the same cosmic targets show just have far we’ve come.Webb launched over three decades after Hubble and represents the advancements in space telescope technology that have happened over that time. Webb is not here to steal Hubble’s thunder. It’s here to see the universe in a new way. This is what the James Webb Space Telescope looked like during a test deployment of its primary mirror in March 2020. We don’t have any glorious space shots of Webb out in orbit. This mirror selfie will have to suffice. The telescope — the subject of a controversy over its name — uses a collection of gold-plated hexagonal mirrors and sees the universe in infrared light.
NASA has specifically called Webb the “successor” to Hubble and not its replacement. The Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990 and has been operating in the challenging conditions of space for over 30 years, a remarkable lifespan. Hubble mainly sees in optical (visible) and ultraviolet wavelengths, so its “eyes” work differently from Webb, which sees in infrared. Infrared helps Webb gaze through dusty regions of space that Hubble can’t penetrate.Webb’s mirror is also much bigger than Hubble’s. “This larger light collecting area means that Webb can peer farther back into time than Hubble is capable of doing,” said NASA.
In 2012, a decade before Webb’s first images came out, the Hubble team delivered the deepest view of space we’d ever seen, known as the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF). It was a new version of part of the telescope’s older Ultra Deep Field image. The XDF showed about 5,000 galaxies with some of them reaching back to 13.2 billion years ago. NASA and the European Space Agency released a series of Hubble Deep Fields over the years. They’re still beautiful, but they also highlight just how powerful Webb is by comparison.
The first major Webb image arrived with much fanfare on July 11, 2022. It represents the deepest infrared view of our universe yet. The area in the view is called SMAC 0723 and it’s home to a huge galaxy cluster. The pointed objects are stars, while everything else is a galaxy. The image is called Webb’s First Deep Field, which hints at much more to come. “Webb’s image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground — and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of vast universe,” said NASA.The clarity is astounding. It’s like a time machine, showing SMAC 0723 as it looked 4.6 billion years ago.Check out a full breakdown on the first Webb images here.
This Hubble view of the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula was released in 2008. This area of the nebula is nicknamed the Cosmic Cliffs. It’s quite a sight to behold, but it’s also less clear than Webb’s view. Webb’s infrared eyes help reveal previously invisible areas of star birth that Hubble couldn’t capture.
Hello, new computer wallpaper. One of the most eye-catching new James Webb Space Telescope images is this mounding mass of star birth in the Carina Nebula. “The blistering, ultraviolet radiation from the young stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away. Dramatic pillars tower above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation,” said ESA.Take note of how many stars you can see in this image. The entire landscape almost looks like it’s in 3D.
The Southern Ring Nebula is also known as the Eight Burst Nebula thanks to its figure-8 appearance as seen by some telescopes. Hubble’s 1998 look at the nebula is lovely, showing diffuse shades of blue, yellow and brownish-red. It has a bit of a blob-like, milky look to it. Buckle up for Webb’s version next.
Holy details, Batman. Webb’s view of the Southern Ring Nebula (formally known as NGC 3132) revealed new information about it. “The dimmer star at the center of this scene has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that this star is cloaked in dust,” said NASA.It shows just how beautiful dying stars can be.
NASA shared two different Webb perspectives on the Southern Ring Nebula. “The stars — and their layers of light — are prominent in the image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the left, while the image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the right shows for the first time that the second star is surrounded by dust,” said NASA.
Stephan’s Quintet — formally known as Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92) — is a group of five galaxies, four of which are busy interacting with each other. The group is in the constellation Pegasus. The lighter-colored galaxy to the left is actually closer to us and isn’t a part of the in-crowd of the other four. Hubble’s vision of the quintet from 2009 is plenty ethereal. Webb took a fresh look in 2022.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s view of Stephan’s Quintet took quite an effort to put together. It’s made from nearly 1,000 separate image files. “With its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group,” said NASA. “Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image.”
Let’s wind the clock back to 1990 when the Hubble Space Telescope was still the new kid in the cosmos. To show how advanced Hubble was, NASA released a comparison of stars. The image of stars on the left came from a ground-based telescope in Chile while the image on the right was Hubble’s much sharper “first light” view of the same stars. Hubble is now on the other end of the comparison as Webb delivers sparkling new images. It’s the natural path of things when it comes to the onward march of space technology. Hubble has weathered many technical glitches over the decades, but NASA expects it will continue to serve the astronomy community for years, not in Webb’s shadow, but as a venerated elder that’s still delivering quality science.
The most comprehensive plans need a sprinkle of luck, even in space.
In October 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) watched as Chariklo, a tiny ringed asteroid, eclipsed a star. This event, called an occultation, marked a first for Webb. At the month’s end, Webb turned toward Chariklo again and notched another victory: For the first time, astronomers analyzing the telescope’s data spotted clear signs of water ice, the presence of which was only hinted at until now. These observations will guide astronomers to better understand the nature and behavior of tiny bodies in the outer reaches of our solar system.
But the two feats almost did not happen.
Related: Asteroid Chariklo Has Rings: Images of a Space Rock Oddity (Gallery)
Although it is the largest of its kind, Chariklo is still too small and too far for even the mighty Webb to photograph directly. Instead, astronomers decided to study it through occultation, which is an indirect but powerful method to study small bodies like Chariklo. But the team did not know if and when a star — without which an occultation would not occur — would fall into Webb’s field of view. This made Chariklo part of Webb’s target of opportunity (opens in new tab) program: If the asteroid happened to cross in front of a star, the program would allow astronomers to temporarily interrupt the telescope’s schedule to observe the event.
The team calculated only a 50% chance that Webb would spot a star bright enough with an interesting object like Chariklo crossing in front. After its launch in 2021, as Webb went through routine course corrections to hold it steady in its parking spot in space, the team continued predicting and revising its list of possible occultations. Late last year, astronomers ended up on the favorable side of that 50% when they discovered “by remarkable good luck” that Chariklo was on track to occult a star that also fell into Webb’s view.
“This was the first stellar occultation attempted with Webb,” the team wrote in a NASA statement (opens in new tab) published Wednesday (Jan. 25). “A lot of hard work went into identifying and refining the predictions for this unusual event.”
On Oct. 18, 2022, Chariklo and its system of two rings crossed in front of a star. Using Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam), astronomers monitored the star’s brightness for an hour. Resulting data showed two dips in the star’s brightness as expected: When the asteroid’s rings first hid the star as the eclipse began, and again when the last of its rings wrapped up the occultation.
“The shadows produced by Chariklo’s rings were clearly detected,” the team wrote in the statement, “demonstrating a new way of using Webb to explore solar system objects.”
Read more: How the James Webb Space Telescope works in pictures
Graphic showing the dimming effects of Chariklo’s rings on a background star. (Image credit: IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI) SCIENCE: Pablo Santos-Sanz (IAA-CSIC), Nicolás Morales (IAA-CSIC), Bruno Morgado (UFRJ, ON/MCTI, LIneA))
Objects like Chariklo are called centaurs, thanks to their hybrid nature. (Centaurs are mythological horse-human hybrids.) They look like asteroids but behave like comets — complete with visible tails. Their home, an unstable orbit between Jupiter and Neptune, hosts thousands of centaurs of varying shapes and sizes. As interesting as they are, their small size and vast distance make them difficult to study. The composition of even the biggest centaur, Chariklo — which is still tiny at just 160 miles (250 km) in diameter and distant at a whooping 2 billion miles (3.2 billion km) from us — is poorly understood. Also, past research hinted at water ice somewhere in Chariklo’s system, but had yet to conclusively detect it.
In this latest research, astronomers pointed Webb at Chariklo again. This time, they used the telescope’s Near-infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument to measure the sunlight reflected by Chariklo and its two rings. The resulting spectrum showed three absorption bands of water ice, marking the first clear indication of crystalline ice.
The presence of crystalline ice likely indicates that Chariklo is subject to constant bombardment, according to Dean Hines, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland. “Because high-energy particles transform ice from crystalline into amorphous states, detection of crystalline ice indicates that the Chariklo system experiences continuous micro-collisions that either expose pristine material or trigger crystallization processes,” Hines said in NASA’s statement.
Read more: Centaurs Rising: NASA Eyes Missions to Weird Asteroid-Comet Hybrids
Reflectance spectrum of the double-ringed centaur 10199 Chariklo, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on Oct. 31, 2022. This spectrum shows clear evidence for crystalline water ice on Chariklo’s surface. (Image credit: IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI) SCIENCE: Noemí Pinilla-Alonso (FSI/UCF), Ian Wong (STScI), Javier Licandro (IAC))
Astronomers have gotten one step closer to studying the Chariklo system, but there is still much that remains unknown about the centaur. The spectrum analyzed in the latest research includes information about the system as a whole, but at the moment, it is difficult to distinguish the data between Chariklo and its two rings.
For example, although astronomers spotted the first clear signs for crystalline water ice, they do not yet know for sure where in the asteroid’s system the ice is present. In the coming months, researchers hope to use Webb’s high sensitivity to dig up individual features of Chariklo and its two rings, Pablo Santos-Sanz, an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain who took part in this research, said in the statement.
“We hope [to] gain insight into why this small body even has rings at all, and perhaps detect new fainter rings,” Santos-Sanz said.
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The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is currently offline, and all science observations using the instrument will have to be rescheduled as engineers try to repair the thing.
“On Sunday, January 15, the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRISS experienced a communications delay within the instrument, causing its flight software to time out,” NASA confirmed in a statement this week.
“The instrument is currently unavailable for science observations while NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) work together to determine and correct the root cause of the delay. There is no indication of any danger to the hardware, and the observatory and other instruments are all in good health.”
Together with the Fine Guidance Sensor, the NIRISS allows the telescope to point its cameras and instruments precisely to capture light from objects deep in space. The spectrograph operates at near-infrared wavelengths, and is a specialized instrument that can resolve light from individual objects that otherwise appear quite close together.
Astronomers use the NIRISS to detect exoplanets as well as capture wide-field images to study populations of stars and galaxies. But boffins who were in the middle of using the telescope’s instrument or planning to will have to wait until it comes back online. The glitch, unfortunately, will mean precious observation times allotted to astronomers will have to be adjusted.
NIRISS was built by the Canadian Space Agency, and is sensitive enough to study the atmospheres of exoplanets. The first set of images taken by the JWST, revealed by NASA back in July last year, showed it had managed to detect water and hazy clouds on the hot gas giant WASP-96b.
Launched on Christmas Day in 2021, the years-late, multi-billion-dollar JWST is the most expensive and powerful space telescope built yet. But the machine has suffered a few glitches less than a year into its operations, including a grating wheel issue that temporarily took down its Mid-Infrared Instrument, as well as a software fault that impacted its attitude control system and forced it to enter safe mode for a few weeks.
Unlike Hubble, the JWST isn’t repairable as it orbits the Sun a million miles from Earth at the second Lagrange point. The instrument has already been pelted with space debris, such as micrometeoroids. The eggheads think this latest gremlin is repairable from our home world. ®
[Hank Green] posted an interesting video about the first liquid mirror telescope from back in the 1850s. At the time, scientists were not impressed. But, these days, people are revisiting the idea. The big problem with the early telescope is that it used mercury. Mercury is really bad for people and the environment.
The good thing about a liquid scope is that you can pretty easily make a large mirror. You just need a shallow pool of liquid and a way to spin it. However, there are downsides. You need to isolate the liquid from vibrations and dust. Another downside is that since gravity makes the shape of the mirror, these telescopes only go one way — straight up.
Modern liquid telescopes have high-tech ways to combat all of the problems except the straight-up view. While it can be expensive to safely handle a huge amount of mercury and isolate it from vibrations, it can still be less expensive than polishing mirrors of similar size. The 6-meter Large Zenith Telescope at the University of British Columbia, for example, claims to cost about 2% of what a similar instrument made with glass would cost. In addition to rotating to maintain their parabolic shape, Earth-bound liquid mirrors also rotate around the Earth’s axis, which causes the mirror to point ever so slightly off the point directly overhead, something that precise observations have to take into account.
The first actual practical liquid mirror telescope had a 50cm mirror. Modern examples are mostly in the 3-6 meter range. Gallium is another possible liquid, but that raises the cost significantly. In addition, research is underway to find safer liquids and solve the problems associated with tilting the mirror.
The classic way to make a mirror is to grind it from a glass blank. If you make your own telescope, you can play with the look of it in interesting ways.
HONOLULU (KHNL/Gray News) – A mysterious spiral of light in the sky captured by a telescope in Hawaii has been identified, and it’s not a bird, plane or flying saucer.
Captured on the Subaru Telescope in Mauna Kea, the so-called “flying spiral” is a new satellite that was launched earlier that day by SpaceX, according to KHNL.
On Wednesday, SpaceX sent the global positioning satellite into space for the U.S. Space Force.
“The spiral seems to be related to the SpaceX company’s launch of a new satellite,” Subaru Telescope officials from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan wrote in a tweet.
Satellite tracker Scott Tilley also chimed in on the thread and said the location of the spiral was a close match for where the second stage Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX was expected to be in the minutes after launch.
Officials said this isn’t the first time a similar glowing, circular feature was spotted after a SpaceX launch.
People in locations as distant as New Zealand have seen such spirals overhead after Falcon 9 activity.
In other occurrences of similar SpaceX satellites, space watchers have said the spiral shape arises as the upper stage of the Falcon 9 vents release fuel during its long descent into the ocean.
Officials said SpaceX sent five missions to space in the first 19 days of 2023.
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