Nature.com - Jan. 28, 2008
The Gemini Observatory has rejected a bid to allow UK astronomers continued access to one of its two telescopes.
The rejection means the astronomers will be very restricted in their ability to view much of the northern sky, says Michael Rowan-Robinson, president of the Royal Astronomical Society in London. "Obviously, we're very disappointed."
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Monday, January 28, 2008
Skies dim for British astronomers
BBC News - Jan. 26, 2008
UK astronomers will lose access to two of the world's finest telescopes in February, as administrators look to plug an £80m hole in their finances.
Observation programmes on the 8.1m telescopes of the Gemini organisation will end abruptly because Britain is cancelling its subscription.
It means UK astronomers can no longer view the Northern Hemisphere sky with the largest class of telescope.
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UK astronomers will lose access to two of the world's finest telescopes in February, as administrators look to plug an £80m hole in their finances.
Observation programmes on the 8.1m telescopes of the Gemini organisation will end abruptly because Britain is cancelling its subscription.
It means UK astronomers can no longer view the Northern Hemisphere sky with the largest class of telescope.
...
Thursday, January 10, 2008
NASA and Gemini Probe Mysterious Explosion in the Distant Past
Reuters - Jan. 8, 2008
GREENBELT, Md., Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Using the powerful one-two combo of NASA's Swift satellite and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have detected a mysterious type of cosmic explosion farther back in time than ever before. The explosion, known as a short gamma-ray burst (GRB), took place 7.4 billion years ago, more than halfway back to the Big Bang.
"This discovery dramatically moves back the time at which we know short GRBs were exploding. The short burst is almost twice as far as the previous confirmed record holder," says John Graham of the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Md. Graham is presenting his group's discovery on Tuesday in a poster at the American Astronomical Society's 2008 winter meeting in Austin, Texas.
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GREENBELT, Md., Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Using the powerful one-two combo of NASA's Swift satellite and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have detected a mysterious type of cosmic explosion farther back in time than ever before. The explosion, known as a short gamma-ray burst (GRB), took place 7.4 billion years ago, more than halfway back to the Big Bang.
"This discovery dramatically moves back the time at which we know short GRBs were exploding. The short burst is almost twice as far as the previous confirmed record holder," says John Graham of the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Md. Graham is presenting his group's discovery on Tuesday in a poster at the American Astronomical Society's 2008 winter meeting in Austin, Texas.
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Intergalactic 'Shot In The Dark' Shocks Astronomers
ScienceDaily - Dec. 18, 2007
When a shot is fired, one expects to see a person with a gun. In the same way, whenever a giant star explodes, astronomers expect to see a galaxy of stars surrounding the site of the blast. This comes right out of basic astronomy, since almost all stars in our universe belong to galaxies. But a stellar explosion seen last January has shocked astronomers because when they looked for the star’s parent galaxy, they saw nothing at all. The explosion took place in the middle of nowhere, far away from any detectable galaxy...
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Using the team's robotic 60-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory in Calif., the astronomers discovered that the burst had a bright afterglow that was fading fast. They observed the afterglow in detail with two of the world's largest telescopes, the Gemini North telescope and the Keck I telescope, both near the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea.
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When a shot is fired, one expects to see a person with a gun. In the same way, whenever a giant star explodes, astronomers expect to see a galaxy of stars surrounding the site of the blast. This comes right out of basic astronomy, since almost all stars in our universe belong to galaxies. But a stellar explosion seen last January has shocked astronomers because when they looked for the star’s parent galaxy, they saw nothing at all. The explosion took place in the middle of nowhere, far away from any detectable galaxy...
...
Using the team's robotic 60-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory in Calif., the astronomers discovered that the burst had a bright afterglow that was fading fast. They observed the afterglow in detail with two of the world's largest telescopes, the Gemini North telescope and the Keck I telescope, both near the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea.
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