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NASA Practices Placement of Primary Mirror Segments on James Webb Space Telescope

NASA engineers and scientists have been making practice runs to ensure the placement of primary mirror segments on the James Webb Space Telescope go perfectly when the flight equipment is ready. NASA issued a video and photos showing the practice run in the giant clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

21 Mar 2013

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Project Achieves Another Milestone

The first truly global telescope came a significant step closer to completion this month with the installation and first light on three new 1-meter telescopes at the South Africa Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) near Sutherland, South Africa. A team of five Las Cumbres engineers, technicians, and a postdoc, convened at Sutherland for three weeks during late February and early March to achieve this feat.

19 Mar 2013

Square Kilometre Array, IBM and ASTRON Partner to Tackle Big Data Challenge

Square Kilometer Array (SKA) South Africa, a business unit of the country’s National Research Foundation is joining ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and IBM in a four-year collaboration to research extremely fast, but low-power exascale computer systems aimed at developing advanced technologies for handling the massive amount of data that will be produced by the SKA, which is one of the most ambitious science projects ever undertaken.

12 Mar 2013

Article on the Square Kilometre Array Wins Physics Journalism Prize

Anil Ananthaswamy has won the inaugural Physics Journalism Prize – a prize designed to inspire the next generation of physicists by encouraging journalists to grapple with often complex topics and help spread excitement about the subject.

2 Mar 2013

Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope Observes New Particles Trapped in Giant Belts of Radiation

After most NASA science spacecraft launches, researchers wait patiently for months as instruments on board are turned on one at a time, slowly ramped up to full power, and tested to make sure they work at full capacity.

1 Mar 2013

Maksutov Telescope on Board NEOSSat Can Help Discover Near-Earth Asteroids

Everyone knows that if you want to see a great distance, getting up higher makes for a better view. University of Calgary researchers are following that principle to make ground-breaking discoveries of asteroids in near-Earth orbits.

25 Feb 2013

Nano-Satellites with Small Space Telescopes Advance Astronomy

The smallest astronomical satellite ever built will launch shortly after 07:20 a.m. EST on Monday, 25 February 2013 as part of a mission to prove that even a very small telescope can push the boundaries of astronomy.

25 Feb 2013

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope Detects Tiny Planetary System

NASA's Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun.

21 Feb 2013

Astronomers Employ Multi-Object Spectroscopy to Study Atmosphere of Exoplanets

When astronomers discovered planet GJ 1214b circling a star more than 47 light-years from Earth in 2009, their data presented two possibilities. Either it was a mini-Neptune shrouded in a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, or it was a water world nearly three times the size of Earth.

20 Feb 2013

Cranfield University Manufactures Lenses for the E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope)

Cranfield University has this week completed the grinding of mirror segments to be used for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) – the largest optical telescope in the world.

From Cranfield University 14 Feb 2013