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Caty Pilachowski IUB Astronomy Telescopes: From Galileo to Hi-Tech Giants Mini-University 2005 Slide 2 Beginnings This sketch of a telescope was included in a letter written by Giovanpattista della Porta in August 1609 Slide 3 Thomas Harriets Drawings of the Moon and Sun Slide 4 Invented by the Scottish mathematician James Gregory in the early 1660s Newton communicated the details of his telescope to the Royal Society in 1670 Newton and his Reflecting Telescope Slide 5 Telescopes and how they work from lenses to mirrors Slide 6 Technology moves forward Slide 7 The 3.5-meter WIYN telescope Kitt Peak, Arizona Slide 8 New Telescope Technology Fast mirror Lightweight mirror Mirror shape controlled Mechanically simpler mount Temperature control Slide 9 Casting the WIYN Mirror Slide 10 Polishing the WIYN Mirror Slide 11 The WIYN New Technology Dome Compact telescope chamber Open for ventilation Insulated to keep cool Heated spaces kept separate Slide 12 Breaking the cost curve New technology provides better performance at lower cost WIYN Slide 13 in 6-8 meter telescopes WIYN TECHNOLOGY Slide 14 8-10 Meter Telescopes Today Keck Telescopes Gemini North and South ESOs Very Large Telescope Subaru Hobby-Eberly Telescope and SALT MMT Observatory Magellan Large Binocular Telescope Slide 15 The Twin Keck Telescopes on Mauna Kea Two 10-meter telescopes segmented mirrors 36 hexagonal segments Keck I in 1993; Keck II in 1996 Slide 16 ESOs VLT Cerro Paranal, Chile Four 8.2 meter telescopes Antu (the Sun) Kueyen (the Moon) Melipel (the Southern Cross) Yepun (Venus - as evening star) Slide 17 Subaru on Mauna Kea Built by Japan 8.2-meter mirror supported on air superb images Slide 18 New technology telescopes give new views of the universe How is the Universe put together? What is the Universe made of? Is there life elsewhere? Slide 19 How is the Universe put together? The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe tells us about the state of the Universe 400,000 years after the Big Bang. How did the Universe evolve from this Slide 20 to this? Slide 21 The cosmic web of intergalactic gas and galaxies in a young universe Intergalactic gas Clumps concentrated by dark matter lead to galaxies Observing the assembly of galaxies Galaxy building blocks observed with Hubble Simulation Slide 22 WMAP also provides evidence of the first stars Tiny fluctuations in polarization About 200 million years after the Big Bang Slide 23 Can we see the first stars? Simulation To see the first stars, we need a 30-m telescope! (Barton et al., 2004) 4 million LY hydrogen emission from hot stars Green=hot gasyellow=stars Slide 24 The composition of stars and gas: everything else 90% hydrogen atoms 10% helium atoms Less than 1% everything else What is the Universe made of? Slide 25 But ordinary matter is only part of the story 96% of the Universe is something else Slide 26 Galaxy interactions require more mass than we can see Antennae Galaxy (HST) Computer simulation The real thing Slide 27 Dark Matter The universe contains additional matter we cannot see Dark matter interacts with normal matter through gravity Dark matter does NOT interact with light the way the normal matter does The Universe contains 5 or 6 times MORE dark matter than normal matter All galaxies are embedded in clouds of dark matter We do not know what it is! Slide 28 Redshift of Galaxies The spectra of galaxies are shifted to the red: galaxies are moving away from us. The farther away a galaxy is, the faster it recedes from us! Slide 29 Hubbles Law Slide 30 The speeds of very distant galaxies tell us the Universe is expanding faster today than in the past The brightness of stellar explosions tells us how far away galaxies are Slide 31 The universe is expanding faster today than it did in early times This expansion cannot be caused by ordinary or dark matter, which slows expansion. The acceleration suggests a new repulsive force (anti-gravity) acting on very large scales The Universe is speeding up! Slide 32 Dark energy accounts for 73% of the content of the universe Dark matter accounts for 23% The content were familiar with is only 4% The New Force Is Called Dark Energy Slide 33 We dont know What is Dark Energy? Identifying what dark energy is requires bigger telescopes and new techniques Slide 34 Is there life elsewhere? Artists conception of 55 Cancris planetary system More than 150 planets found around other stars Most are vastly different from our Solar System Slide 35 detecting planets directly is hard planets are small and dim planets are near much brighter stars detecting planets directly requires large telescopes (30-meters) and/or special instruments Detecting Planets Slide 36 text The importance of image quality typical ground- based image Hubble image WIYN image The Ring Nebula Slide 37 Adaptive Optics Correcting distortions caused by the Earths Atmosphere Slide 38 How does it work??? Slide 39 UH-88, Courtesy W.Brandner, 0.65 seeing 4 40 5 >220 stars in 5x5 Gemini N/Hokupaa-QUIRC (U of H/NSF) The Power of Adaptive Optics Slide 40 An exoplanet orbits a brown dwarf star at a distance of about 55 AU (the star and planet are about 200 light years away) From the ESO Very Large Telescope Slide 41 Imaging planets around other stars Brown Dwarf orbiting a star at the same distance as Saturn from our Sun Gemini/Keck AO detection by Michael Liu (IfA), 2002 Slide 42 With a 30-meter telescope we can obtain the spectra of planets around other stars to search for the signatures of life Simulation by Sudarsky et al. 2003 Simulation of the spectra of 55 Cancris planets Slide 43 Connecting the First Nanoseconds to the Origin of Life Slide 44 New Telescopes to Answer New Questions 30-meter telescope 8-meter survey telescope James Webb Space Telescope Virtual Observatory Slide 45 The giant, segmented-mirror telescope To study the formation of the first stars and galaxies will require a new generation of larger telescopes Bigger than a football field! JWST Slide 46 8.4-meters Triple-fold optical design 3 billion pixel-camera 30,000 gigabytes each night LSST Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope Survey the sky each week Real-time data analysis 3 billion sources + transients Slide 47 Exploring the Dark Universe with LSST Slide 48 WIYN and the Future: ODI One Degree Imager 1 billion pixels: 32,000 x 32,000 pixels on chip image correction Slide 49 ODI in the Astronomical Landscape The best wide-field imager, current or planned Diagnostic Imaging Information rate 2nd only to LSST (in 2012+) Image quality median seeing 0.7 sampling 0.11 image correction Time resolution 2-4s readouts faster for small regions Slide 50 IU Science with ODI Star clusters and stellar evolution The history of nearby galaxies Surveys of faint and distant galaxies Slide 51 Beyond 30-meters ESOs Overwhelmingly Large Telescope Slide 52 Websites of Interest Indiana Astronomical Society www.iasindy.org www.iasindy.org National Optical Astronomy Observatory Image Gallery www.noao.edu/image_gallery www.noao.edu/image_gallery Hubble Space Telescope Images www.hubblesite.org www.hubblesite.org Amazing Space amazing-space.stsci.edu amazing-space.stsci.edu NASAs Astronomy Picture of the Day antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov Astronomical Society of the Pacific www.astrosociety.org www.astrosociety.org The Stonebelt Stargazers www.mainbyte.com/stargazers/ www.mainbyte.com/stargazers/