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11 October 2005: A team of astronomers including NOAO scientists have used the Hubble Space Telescope to identify the source of a mysterious blue light surrounding a supermassive black hole in our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy (M31). The strange light has puzzled astronomers for more than a decade. Infrared image of the Andromeda Galaxy taken with the Mayall 4-meter telescope at KPNO.

27 September 2005: Over the course of 14 dark nights at Kitt Peak National Observatory, more than 70 images of the Virgo galaxy cluster were taken by the Case Western Reserve University’s 24-inch Burrell Schmidt telescope. Advanced image processing techniques were used to combine the individual images into a single image capable of directly revealing for the first time a vast, complex web of intracluster starlight between the galaxies.

15 September 2005: Fulfilling one of its central operational goals in a big way, the SOuthern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR) on Cerro Pachón in Chile made the first observations of the glowing remains of the most distant explosion ever seen in the Universe. The international telescope then provided the first accurate measurement of just how incredibly far away this explosion appears to be.

6 September 2005: A unique wide-field view of the Orion Nebula in the mid-infrared, from Gemini South, is featured on the cover of the September 2005 NOAO/NSO Newsletter. This image reveals new details about the preferred locations and inferred lifespans of newborn planetary systems in the nebula. Other topics in the Newsletter include submissions to the NSF Senior Review, new partnership opportunities, and semester 2006A proposal information.

30 August 2005: This image of galaxy cluster Abell 3266 was taken using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) instrument on the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachón, Chile, in July 2005. The image was obtained by the NOAO Fundamental Plane Survey team as part of follow-up observations in support of their spectroscopic data from Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.

11 August 2005: Starlight illuminates wispy clouds of dust above the star Antares in this image mosaic from the Kitt Peak Advanced Observing Program. Globular cluster M4 can be seen to the right of the bright star.

27 July 2005: High school teachers making observations with the research telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory as part of the Teacher Leaders in Research Based Science Education (TLRBSE) workshop obtained some of the earliest multicolor imaging and spectra of a newly exploded massive star in a nearby galaxy.

18 July 2005: This image shows a deep Hydrogen-alpha image of the brightest X-ray source in the sky, NGC 1275, taken by the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, AZ. The filaments emanating from this galaxy likely are the result of an interaction between the black hole in the center of the galaxy and the intracluster medium surrounding it.

7 July 2005: On the night of the Deep Impact event, many hundreds of images were taken of comet Tempel 1 at the Kitt Peak Visitor Center Observatory. In the almost two hours of time that elapsed during that imaging, the comet's position changed against the background stars. When all of the images of this motion are added together, the resulting streak of light is shown in the image above. Starting from the left, the comet was its natural brightness. The streak brightens significantly in the middle, immediately after impact of the probe! A full size version of the above image and more are available on our Deep Impact page.

5 July 2005: The blinking image above are two images of Tempel 1 about 20 minutes before and after the Deep Impact probe impacted the comet. These images of were taken using the Kitt Peak Visitor Center’s 20in Ritchey-Chretien telescope (RCOS) and an SBIG ST10XME CCD camera. A full size version of the above animation as well as a time-lapse animation are available on our Deep Impact page.

1 July 2005: How can you watch the planned first-of-its-kind collision between a comet and a spacecraft from Earth this weekend, even if your night skies don’t allow a direct view? The Visitor Center at Kitt Peak National Observatory plans to offer a live feed of the encounter between NASA’s Deep Impact mission and Comet Tempel 1 starting this Sunday night (local time), running about an hour before the planned 10:52 p.m. PDT impact though about 45 minutes afterward. The feed will consist of still images of the distant comet, and a frequently updated movie assembled from the individual frames, similar to the animation above (imaged on the night of June 14-15, 2005).

16 June 2005: This image of a faint optical remnant of Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) 050607 was obtained by James Rhoads (Space Telescope Science Institute) using the Mayall 4-meter telescope on Kitt Peak in the early morning hours of June 7, 2005. Rhoads suspended his science program and got “on source” on the GRB just 10 minutes after an alert was issued on the burst being detected by NASA’s Swift satellite.

3 June 2005: The cover of the June, 2005 NOAO/NSO Newsletter features this false color image of the dynamic solar chromosphere, taken on 18 January 2005. Daily images like this one, made with the new SOLIS vector spectromagnetograph, have been obtained with various instruments on Kitt Peak for 31 years. The June Newsletter contains articles on a new roadmap for optical-infrared astronomy, related partnership opportunities at NOAO, and recent Gemini science instrument productivity.

18 May 2005: Curtains of gas and dust open dramatically to reveal the inner area of this starforming region. The unceremoniously named bright star SAO 152320 shines with intense light in the center of this field. Clouds of gas glow strongly and dust shrinks quickly under its radiative prowess. This vista lies some 4,000 light years away toward the constellation Monoceros. This is a portion of a much larger nebula called Gum 1.

6 May 2005: The draft report of the O/IR Long Range Planning Committee is available for community review and input until May 15. See the O/IR Long Range Planning Committee web page for more information and to download a draft report.

16 April 2005: These images show two views of the active galaxy Centaurus A—in visible light from Cerro Tololo and in infrared light from two instruments aboard the NASA-JPL Spitzer Space Telescope. For more details, see the Image Gallery page.

5 April 2005: The winter rains were plentiful in 2004-2005, giving rise to a beautiful display of wildflowers along the road to Kitt Peak. A number of telescopes are visible in the background of this image from March 2005, including the Mayall 4-meter telescope at the peak of the mountain.

25 March 2005: This open star cluster in the constellation Scorpius is set against the dramatic backdrop of the Milky Way. At 800-1000 light years away, M7's 80-odd stars are spread over some 20-25 light-years and are in excess of 200 million years old. This image of M7 was taken during the Advanced Observing Program.

10 March 2005: The March 2005 NOAO-NSO Newsletter contains articles on the pending NSF Senior Review, observing opportunities in Semester 2005B, the Gemini WFMOS instrument concept, and the WIYN One-Degree Imager.

1 March 2005: How do you hide something as big and bright as a galaxy? You smother it in cosmic dust. Researchers used data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey to uncover a hidden population of monstrously bright galaxies approximately 11 billion light-years away.