Press Releases

2 October 2001: After seven years of design and construction but only two weeks of commissioning, a remarkable first light image was obtained with a new state-of the-art instrument at the Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea. The image of the large galaxy in Pisces called NGC 628 (or Messier 74) has been called the "Perfect Spiral Galaxy" due to its nearly ideal form, which is clearly revealed in this new image.

28 August 2001: Astronomers have discovered a double star system, known as a massive X-ray binary, with an orbit so elongated that the twosome appears to have barely survived the disruptive effects of the supernova that transformed them into a fountain of X-ray energy.

14 August 2001: Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Blanco Telescope in Chile have used the distorting effects of a weak gravitational lens to discover and locate a dim cluster of at least 15 galaxies at a significant distance from Earth, using only the mass properties of the cluster, not its visible light.

23 July 2001: A dramatic infrared image released today by the Gemini Observatory sheds new light on the early stages of the formation of giant stars in our galaxy. The image, taken by the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, reveals remarkable details in a nebula of gas and dust expelled from a young star named AFGL 2591. This expulsion is a common feature in the formation of stars similar in size to the Sun, but it is far less common in their massive counterparts.

2 July 2001: Astronomers from Lowell Observatory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory have discovered an icy planetary body orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt roughly equal in size to Pluto’s moon Charon.

4 June 2001: From massive young star clusters swaddled in a dust cocoon 600 trillion miles wide to intriguing structural details in a circumstellar disk around a nearby binary star system, the 8-meter Gemini North telescope is providing astronomers with some of their best-ever infrared views of the processes of star and planet formation.

26 April 2001: Infrared astronomy pioneer Dr. Fred Gillett died Sunday, April 22, 2001 at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle at the age of 64, following a months-long battle with a rare bone marrow disorder.

19 March 2001: A consortium led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Indiana University and Yale University has been selected to assume operational responsibility for the historic 0.9-meter (36-inch) telescope at the National Science Foundation's Kitt Peak National Observatory.

28 February 2001: Using an off-the-shelf camera set for a long exposure and satellite data freely available on the Internet, solar scientist Bill Livingston has developed a dependable method for taking pictures of commercial communications satellites hovering high above Earth.

15 February 2001: Catherine (Caty) Pilachowski, a scientific staff member at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, AZ, has been elected as the new president of the American Astronomical Society.

11 January 2001: A sharply detailed image of the northwest portion of the Andromeda galaxy, M31, demonstrates the power of an on-going sky survey project sponsored by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).

9 January 2001: Astronomers surveying hundreds of red giant stars in more than a dozen globular star clusters have found clues that may reveal an unexpected origin of lithium, the third element in the Periodic Table.

8 January 2001: The simple spherical geometry of planetary nebula Abell 39 will help astronomers identify the source of very serious errors in measuring the chemical composition of dying stars.

8 January 2001: The National Optical Astronomy Observatory's Deep Wide-Field Survey marks its first release of data today with a large, exhibit-sized image of 300,000 faint galaxies and stars at the opening of the 197th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

14 November 2000: Astronomers studying how elements heavier than iron were produced in the early Milky Way have identified a distinct series of epochs of galaxy-wide chemical formation.

16 October 2000: The first scientific observations from the Gemini North telescope provide a dramatic glimpse into the elusive core of the Milky Way, including an intriguing bow-shock from a star as it plows into a poorly understood gas cloud a mere 3 light-years from the galactic center.

30 March 2000: Astronomers from the National Science Foundation's National Solar Observatory are announcing in today's issue of Science that their discovery of periodically varying gas motions below the solar surface provides an important clue toward solving the biggest secret of the Sun - the origin of the 11-year cycle of solar activity.

20 March 2000: After traveling in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, through the Panama Canal and up a steep, narrow mountain road to a remote peak in Chile, one of the world's largest astronomical telescope mirrors arrived safely at the Gemini South Observatory on March 17th, 2000. The mirror, which can collect more light than two million human eyes, is the heart of the Gemini South Telescope on Cerro Pachón, a mountain in central Chile. The telescope will soon join its identical twin, on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, to provide extremely high-resolution images of the universe.

13 January 2000: Astronomers, high school teachers and their students have discovered 73 novae in the Andromeda galaxy through a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded education program called "The Use of Astronomy in Research Based Science Education" (RBSE). These results will be presented today by Dr. Travis A. Rector and George H. Jacoby of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), in Tucson, AZ, to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Atlanta, GA. Novae are stellar outbursts that lead to a rapid brightening when mass is transferred between two stars in a binary system, causing the surface layers of one star to ignite explosively from the fusion of hydrogen nuclei.

21 September 1999: Students in Susie Townsend's multi-age classroom at Miles Exploratory Learning Center, 1400 E. Broadway Blvd., will work with local astronomers and noted authors Joni Chancer and Gina Rester-Zodrow this Friday, September 24, at 10:00 am. Students will safely observe the Sun and then interpret their observations through art and writing invitations. Townsend's class will be studying the Sun and its impact on Earth throughout the school year using a multi-disciplinary, inquiry approach to learning. The Sun is entering the peak of an 11-year cycle of activity, making this a particularly exciting time to investigate solar behavior.