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Water Detected at Edge of Universe

A research group led by graduate student Violette Impellizzeri from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has used the 100 m Effelsberg radio telescope to detect water at the greatest distance from Earth so far. The water vapour was discovered in the quasar MG J0414+0534 at redshift 2.64, which corresponds to a light travel time of 11.1 billion years, a time when the Universe was only a fifth of the age it is today.

The water vapour is thought to exist in clouds of dust and gas that feed the supermassive black hole at the centre of the distant quasar. The detection was later confirmed by high-resolution interferometric observations with the Expanded Very Large Array.

The discovery of water in the early Universe was possible only due to the chance alignment of a foreground galaxy and the distant quasar MG J0414+0534. The foreground galaxy acts like a cosmic telescope, magnifying and distorting the light from the quasar forming four distinct images of the quasar. Without this gravitational lensing effect, 580 days of continuous observations with the 100 m telescope would have been needed instead of the 14 hours used to make this remarkable discovery. “Others have tried and failed to find water, and we knew we were looking for a very faint signal”, says Violette Impellizzeri, “so we thought of using a foreground galaxy like a cosmic magnifying glass to observe at a far greater distance and had to be persistent, and sure enough the line emission of water popped up.”

The detection of water from MG J0414+0534 with the Effelsberg radio telescope also occurred thanks to a touch of fortune. The object is within just the right redshift interval to stretch the line emission of the H2O molecule from its original frequency of 22 GHz to 6 GHz and so within the tuning range of the 6 GHz receiver installed at the telescope.

“It is interesting that we found water in the first gravitationally-magnified object we observed from the distant Universe”, says co-author John McKean. “This suggests that the water molecule may have been much more abundant in the early Universe than first thought, and can be used for further research into supermassive black holes and galaxy evolution at high redshift.”
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Tags: astronomy, galaxy, space, universe, water, water vapor

Hubble to be Souped Up

It was not long ago, back in early 2006 that NASA decided to let Hubble ride it out and just die, but shortly thereafter there was an outcry from influential voices in the scientific community to get up there and service the Hubble Space Telescope.

Well, not only are they now (2 years later) going to service it, but, it is due for a very impressive upgrade.

NASA scientists, engineers and astronauts are finalizing plans to fly the space shuttle this fall on a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to repair and upgrade the orbiting observatory that revolutionized astronomy. The long-delayed servicing mission will be the last for the Hubble, NASA says, but it will allow the telescope to perform at its highest level ever for the remaining five or six years of its operating life.

“This will be the first time ever that instrument box is full,” said Hubble senior scientist David Leckrone last week. “We will have the most powerful imaging capability on Hubble ever, and possibly anywhere.”

It is hard to overstate the importance of the Hubble and its insights into the evolution of the universe, the presence of mysterious dark matter and dark energy, and the existence of hundreds (and probably many more) of planets orbiting distant stars.

In a briefing at the Goddard Space Flight Center, scientists said that observations by the telescope have resulted in an average of 12 published discoveries a week for years, and that almost 4,400 principal and co-investigators have produced articles based on its data.

“This is surely the most productive telescope in history,” said Charles Mattias “Matt” Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore.

It also has the most remarkable history. The upcoming mission, scheduled for early October, will be the fifth to the Hubble, which orbits almost 350 miles above Earth. Launched with great fanfare in 1990 after long delays, the more than $3 billion instrument (funded by NASA but with contributions from the European Space Agency) initially did not work because of a hugely embarrassing mistake in shaping its 2.4-meter mirror.

But the Hubble’s developers and managers went from goats to heroes in 1993 when the first-ever repair mission in orbit succeeded in installing corrective optics that allowed the telescope to begin sending back spectacular and often awe-inspiring images. Subsequent space shuttle missions steadily upgraded the observatory and its capabilities, and the Hubble gradually achieved iconic status.

Time and the harsh environment of space take a constant toll, however, and NASA began planning one final upgrade — until the 2003 destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. Heightened safety concerns led NASA to cancel the mission, but a public outcry ensued.

Officials then proposed sending a robotic mission to repair the telescope, but several years of work led to a finding that it could not do the job. Finally, in 2006, newly appointed NASA Administrator Michael Griffin reversed the earlier decision and gave the go-ahead to the final repair mission.

This last servicing will also deliver two new instruments — the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (which will explore the cosmic web in extreme ultraviolet frequencies) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (which will allow the telescope to “see” across the light spectrum from ultraviolet to optical and infrared). Over the course of five strenuous spacewalks, astronauts will also work to repair cameras and equipment that have degraded or failed, including the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which produced many of the Hubble’s most dramatic images.

The two instruments — weighing a total of 11 tons — are now in a massive “clean room” at Goddard’s Greenbelt campus, where engineers and technicians are conducting final tests and preparing to ship them to the Kennedy Space Center to be loaded onto the space shuttle Atlantis.

Last Monday, the four astronauts who will do the repairs — including John Grunsfeld, who repaired the Hubble twice before, and Michael Massimino, who will be returning for his second mission — joined the Goddard staff in head-to-toe white protective suits and booties required for the clean room to examine the tools they will use to do their work in space.

At Goddard, the new instruments have been exposed to intense vibration, extreme cold and heat and crushingly loud noises to make sure they can withstand the launch and the rigors of space. With the shuttles scheduled to be retired in 2010 and the schedule of flights to the international space station already very tight, the $900 million mission will almost certainly be the last to the Hubble.

Assuming the mission goes off as planned, the first new Hubble data and images are expected by early next year. Edward J. Weiler, who was the Hubble’s first chief scientist and is now NASA’s associate administrator of the Science Missions Directorate, said experience has taught him to be humble about predicting what the Hubble or any other new telescope will find. The major discoveries, he said, are often the ones that overthrow earlier assumptions and understandings.

Having been connected with the Hubble from its conception in the late 1970s to its 1990 launch, from its time as a multi-billion-dollar white elephant and national joke to its later repair and triumph, Weiler sees the Hubble as the ultimate “comeback kid.”

“The telescope has given us spectacular science and images you can find hung up in art galleries, but I think Americans have such strong feelings about the Hubble because of its history,” he said. “Our team and the instrument itself overcame enormous obstacles, but then delivered something that I think shows the best of America. One hundred years from now, people will remember Hubble and still be writing about what it did.”

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Tags: astronomy, hubble, science, space, telescope

Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a collaboration between ESA and NASA. It’s a long-term, space-based observatory. The observations are carried out in visible, infrared and ultraviolet light. In many ways Hubble has revolutionised modern astronomy, by not only being an efficient tool for making new discoveries, but also by driving astronomical research in general.

The mission

The Universe is gloriously transparent to visible light over journeys lasting billions of years. However, in the last few microseconds before light arrives at telescope mirrors on Earth it must travel through our turbulent atmosphere and the fine cosmic details become blurred. It is this same atmospheric turbulence that makes the stars appear to twinkle on a dark night.

Putting a telescope in space is one way of evading this problem. As well as collecting visible light from its orbit high above the atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope also observes the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths that are completely filtered out by the atmosphere.

The Hubble Space Telescope, a joint ESA and NASA project, has made some of the most dramatic discoveries in the history of astronomy. From its vantage point 600 km above the Earth, Hubble can detect light with ‘eyes’ 5 times sharper than the best ground-based telescopes and looks deep into space where some of the most profound mysteries are still buried in the mists of time.

Tags: astronomy, hubble, science, space, telescope

Astronomers go Alien Hunting

The project, led by Japanese astronomers, will bring together a dozen or more observatories from all over the country to study one star that researchers see as a potential home to an extraterrestrial civilization.

“Everyone wonders at least once in their lifetime whether space is infinite and whether aliens really do exist,” said Shinya Narusawa, chief researcher at Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory in western Japan.

The search for aliens and UFOs is not new to Japan. Last year, unidentified flying objects grabbed the headlines after a lawmaker submitted a question to the cabinet on whether the country had confirmed any cases of their existence. The government’s answer: no.

In the scientific world, Japanese researchers have used antennas to catch radio signals from outer space and analyzed the prisms of celestial lights to see if any laser emissions from space can be found, Narusawa said.

Their searches have not been too fruitful so far. The new project will involve multiple astronomers filming one star over several nights some time next year, along with the usual light analysis and recording of radio signals.

“When there are some suspicious signals, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether they are artificial ones coming from the earth, for example from machines, or whether they are coming from the stars in the natural world,” Narusawa said.

With multiple participants observing one star, it will be easier to check on whether the signals received are actually from the natural world, he said, adding that they have not decided on which star to observe.

The participants are realistic about the slim chance of encountering signals from outer space during the short experiment, but they see a larger significance.

“By thinking about outer space, we hope this will be an opportunity where people can re-appreciate the earth and human beings,” Narusawa said.

Tags: alien, astronomy, extraterrestrial