![]() These leviathans would have been hidden by dust if astronomers had been looking for them with visible light. The newest result, released today, digs through the survey to find distant supermassive black holes shining bright in infrared light. In 2011 alone, almost 140 papers were based on observations with UKIRT, and nearly 100 of these were based on results from UKIDSS. “UKIRT is currently the world’s most productive telescope,” Davis adds, and indeed just as the observatory is threatened with closure, the telescope has come to a peak in productivity in large part due to the all-sky UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey. It is currently the world's most productive ground-based telescope, says Joint Astronomy Centre Director Gary Davis. UKIRT's productivity has spiked in recent years, thanks to the all-sky survey, which has proved useful to hundreds of astronomers across disparate fields. The two facilities are complementary, in that UKIRT surveys the northern sky, and it’s the only 4-meter-class infrared telescope to do so. “I can think of telescopes that have been pensioned off because they are old or small or on poor sites, but this is the first time that a productive, world-leading telescope has been in this situation.”īuilt in the late 1970s, UKIRT is currently the world’s second largest telescope dedicated to infrared research, surpassed only by the 4-meter VISTA telescope in Chile. ![]() “This process is completely unprecedented,” Davis says. The deadline for proposals is November 30th. On September 28th, they issued an Announcement of Opportunity offering the observatory to the global astronomical community. Investigate further with an interactive online tool.īut Gary Davis, director of the Joint Astronomy Centre that operates both of the threatened facilities, and Oxford astrophysicist Pat Roche, who chairs the JAC’s board, won’t let UKIRT close down without a fight. The two closures make room in the budget for U.K.’s participation in up-and-coming megaprojects, including the ALMA radio array, the Square Kilometer Array, and the 39-meter European Extremely Large Telescope.Īstronomers put together the Galactic Plane Survey, a very thin strip along the Milky Way's plane, from thousands of images taken by two infrared telescopes: UKIRT in Hawaii and VISTA in Chile. The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), which observes submillimeter wavelengths with a 15-meter primary mirror, is scheduled to close in 2014 UKIRT is to be shuttered a year earlier, in September 2013. In May, the country’s Science and Technology Facilities Council decided to stop supporting two telescopes atop Mauna Kea. This unusual event came about thanks to U.K.’s astronomy funding crisis. As announced late last month, the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) is for sale - a package deal that includes the 12.5-foot (3.8-meter) reflector, its enclosure, and all its instrumentation and support equipment. Got $1.24 million in your pocket? That’s how much it’ll cost per year to operate a productive, world-class observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. government funding and close down - unless the observatory finds new ownership. On September 30, 2013, UKIRT will lose U.K. ![]() As sun sets on Mauna Kea, the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope opens for a night of observing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |