Latest Palomar Observatory Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The first images from a new project are demonstrating a new technique that creates precise "dark holes" around stars of interest. Dark holes are extremely difficult to see directly in an image because the light that stars emit is tens of millions to billions of times brighter than the light given off by planets. However, astronomers working on Project 1640 presented findings of dark holes at the International Society for Optics and...

High-performance networks speed data on explosion's early discovery A recent discovery by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley, of a supernova within hours of its explosion was made possible by a specialized telescope, state-of-the-art computational tools – and the high-speed data transmissions network of UC San Diego's High-Performance Wireless and Research Education Network (HPWREN), as well as the Department...

Astronomers announced on Wednesday a new class of supernova after observing six ultra-bright flashes of ancient exploding stars in deep space.The explosions, which were ten times brighter than any other previously seen supernova, may illuminate star-forming clouds in far-off, primitive galaxies, allowing scientists to observe stellar creation.The scientists directly observed four of these exploding stars, while another two previously unexplained supernovae are now believed to belong to this...

Astronomers have snapped a picture of three planets orbiting a star beyond our own using a modest-sized telescope on the ground. The surprising feat was accomplished by a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using a small portion of the Palomar Observatory's Hale Telescope, north of San Diego.The planets had been imaged previously by two of the world's biggest ground-based telescopes -- one of the two 10-meter (33-foot) telescopes of W.M. Keck Observatory and the...

Gamma-ray bursts, with their ability to pierce through gas and dust to shine brightly across the universe, are revealing areas of intense star formation and stellar death where astronomers have been unable to look - the dusty corners of otherwise dust-free galaxies.The conclusion comes from a survey of "dark" gamma-ray bursts - bright in gamma- and X-ray emissions, but with little or no visible light - reported today (Monday, June 8) at a meeting of the American Astronomical...

Palomar's participation in Around the World in 80 Telescopes enabled by HRWREN's high speed, large bandwidthAround the World in 80 Telescopes, part of the International Year of Astronomy's 100 Hours of Astronomy Cornerstone Project of global outreach activities, will begin on April 3. Observatories in 15 countries spanning all the continents, as well as 11 observatories in space, will participate in this 24-hour trip to observatories across the globe and in the so-called final frontier.The...

Ben Oppenheimer calls starlight "the bane of planet hunting." Although more than 250 planets are known to orbit other stars, so far no one has been able to get a good look at any of them. That's largely because a star's glare is millions of times brighter than a planet, so trying to see a planet next to a star is akin to trying to spot a firefly next to a spotlight, from thousands of miles away. But it's a problem Oppenheimer and his colleagues at the American Museum of Natural...

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory, astronomers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and the California Institute of Technology, USA, have discovered what appears to be the first known triplet of quasars. This close trio of supermassive black holes lies about 10.5 billion light-years away towards the Virgo (The Virgin) constellation. "Quasars are extremely rare objects," says George Djorgovski, from Caltech and leader of...

TUPPER LAKE, N.Y. -- High altitude, low population and little light pollution make the Adirondacks a stargazer's dream location. Look up from New York's northern forest and with the naked eye watch a cascade of stars. With a good telescope, see the rings of Saturn in color. Subzero winter nights are particularly good, with low humidity and clear, magnified skies, amateur astronomer Mark Staves said. That's when he likes to take his telescope outside in Tupper Lake. Staves, fellow amateur...