Nov 18, 2020 08:05 PM
Texans Want to Put a Big Ol' Liquid Mirror Telescope on the Moon
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/m...-the-moon/
EXCERPTS: Astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin want to build a telescope on the moon. Scientists already proposed that idea to NASA years ago, to no avail. This telescope, nicknamed the “Ultimately Large Telescope,” could be different.
In 2008, a group of astronomers [...] came to NASA with a wild idea: Why not put a giant telescope on the moon? .... called the Lunar Liquid Mirror Telescope (LLMT), [it] would have used a large spinning mirror made of liquid and be placed on one of the moon’s poles to study the earliest stars born in the universe.
The telescope was ahead of its time -- so much so that NASA scrapped the idea because there wasn't enough supporting evidence for the existence of the ancient stars the telescope planned to study. But now, more than a decade later, astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin have resurrected the telescope and propose to build a new LLMT, nicknamed the “Ultimately Large Telescope.”
The defining feature of the telescope would be a 328-foot-wide mirror made of liquid. Because the silver-coated glass mirrors used in traditional telescope designs are both heavy, expensive, and fragile, the team is looking to use a lighter, more transportable liquid mirror instead. The mirror would consist of a spinning basin of liquid, topped by another layer of reflective liquid. The telescope would sit stationary inside a crater at either of the moon’s poles and be operated remotely, receiving power from a solar panel power station nearby... (MORE - details)
16-year-old cosmic mystery solved, revealing stellar missing link
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/...111820.php
INTRO: In 2004, scientists with NASA's space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spotted an object unlike any they'd seen before in our Milky Way galaxy: a large, faint blob of gas with a star at its center. Though it doesn't actually emit light visible to the human eye, GALEX captured the blob in ultraviolet (UV) light and thus appeared blue in the images; subsequent observations also revealed a thick ring structure within it. So the team nicknamed it the Blue Ring Nebula. Over the next 16 years, they studied it with multiple Earth- and space-based telescopes, including W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii, but the more they learned, the more mysterious it seemed.
A new study published online on Nov. 18 in the journal Nature may have cracked the case. By applying cutting-edge theoretical models to the slew of data that has been collected on this object, the authors posit the nebula - a cloud of gas in space - is likely composed of debris from two stars that collided and merged into a single star... (MORE)
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hXQ7ObfctRw
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/m...-the-moon/
EXCERPTS: Astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin want to build a telescope on the moon. Scientists already proposed that idea to NASA years ago, to no avail. This telescope, nicknamed the “Ultimately Large Telescope,” could be different.
In 2008, a group of astronomers [...] came to NASA with a wild idea: Why not put a giant telescope on the moon? .... called the Lunar Liquid Mirror Telescope (LLMT), [it] would have used a large spinning mirror made of liquid and be placed on one of the moon’s poles to study the earliest stars born in the universe.
The telescope was ahead of its time -- so much so that NASA scrapped the idea because there wasn't enough supporting evidence for the existence of the ancient stars the telescope planned to study. But now, more than a decade later, astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin have resurrected the telescope and propose to build a new LLMT, nicknamed the “Ultimately Large Telescope.”
The defining feature of the telescope would be a 328-foot-wide mirror made of liquid. Because the silver-coated glass mirrors used in traditional telescope designs are both heavy, expensive, and fragile, the team is looking to use a lighter, more transportable liquid mirror instead. The mirror would consist of a spinning basin of liquid, topped by another layer of reflective liquid. The telescope would sit stationary inside a crater at either of the moon’s poles and be operated remotely, receiving power from a solar panel power station nearby... (MORE - details)
16-year-old cosmic mystery solved, revealing stellar missing link
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/...111820.php
INTRO: In 2004, scientists with NASA's space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spotted an object unlike any they'd seen before in our Milky Way galaxy: a large, faint blob of gas with a star at its center. Though it doesn't actually emit light visible to the human eye, GALEX captured the blob in ultraviolet (UV) light and thus appeared blue in the images; subsequent observations also revealed a thick ring structure within it. So the team nicknamed it the Blue Ring Nebula. Over the next 16 years, they studied it with multiple Earth- and space-based telescopes, including W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii, but the more they learned, the more mysterious it seemed.
A new study published online on Nov. 18 in the journal Nature may have cracked the case. By applying cutting-edge theoretical models to the slew of data that has been collected on this object, the authors posit the nebula - a cloud of gas in space - is likely composed of debris from two stars that collided and merged into a single star... (MORE)
![[Image: Blue-Ring-Nebula-GALEX-WISE-WEB.max-1400x800.jpg]](https://caltech-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/main/images/Blue-Ring-Nebula-GALEX-WISE-WEB.max-1400x800.jpg)