Keck Observatory – Astronomy Now

Rehearsing for more detailed spectroscopic exoplanet analyses

23 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Using adaptive optics and a high-resolution spectrograph, astronomers have confirmed the presence of water in the atmosphere of a planet 130 light years away.

Astronomers shed light on formation of black holes and galaxies

28 December 2017 Astronomy Now

Stars forming in galaxies appear to be influenced by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, but the mechanism of how that happens has not been clear to astronomers until now.

Keck Observatory captures rare high-resolution images of exploded star

26 April 2017 Astronomy Now

Scientists will now be able to measure how fast the universe is truly expanding with the kind of precision not possible before. This, after an international team of astronomers led by Stockholm University, Sweden, captured four distinct images of a gravitationally lensed Type Ia supernova, named iPTF16geu.

Keck Observatory achieves first light with new instrument

14 April 2017 Astronomy Now

W. M. Keck Observatory has captured the very first successful science data from its newest, cutting-edge instrument, the Keck Cosmic Web Imager.

Astronomers confirm faintest early-universe galaxy ever detected

20 May 2016 Astronomy Now

An international team of scientists has detected and confirmed the faintest early-universe galaxy ever using the ten-metre Keck II telescope on the summit on Maunakea, Hawaii. The team analysed three separate images of the object gravitationally lensed by a foreground galaxy cluster, revealing the distant galaxy as it was 13 billion years ago.

Quadruple laser system heralds sharper images for ESO’s Very Large Telescope

27 April 2016 Astronomy Now

ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile hosted an event to mark the first light for the four powerful lasers that form a crucial part of the adaptive optics systems on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Attendees were treated to a spectacular display of the most powerful laser guide stars ever used for astronomy against the majestic southern sky.

Most distant massive galaxy cluster identified

8 January 2016 Astronomy Now

The early universe was a chaotic mess of gas and matter that only began to coalesce into distinct galaxies hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. It would take several billion more years for such galaxies to assemble into massive galaxy clusters — or so scientists had thought. Now astronomers have detected a massive, sprawling, churning galaxy cluster that formed only 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang, some 10 billion light years from Earth.

New method solves 40-year-old mystery on the size of shadowy galaxies

7 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Using the world’s largest telescopes, researchers have discovered ancient cold gas clouds larger than galaxies in the early universe. The discovery has helped solve a decades-old puzzle on the nature of gas clouds, known as damped Lyman-alpha systems, or DLAs.

‘Eye of Sauron’ provides new way of measuring distances to galaxies

26 November 2014 Astronomy Now

A team led by Dr. Sebastian Hoenig from the University of Southampton has developed a new way of measuring precise distances to galaxies tens of millions of light-years away, refining the distance to NGC 4151 and providing a way for accurately determining black hole masses.

Giant storm on Uranus in the 2.2-micron IR band

Amateur astronomers image extreme storms on Uranus

13 November 2014 Ade Ashford

Far from always being a featureless blue-green dot in backyard telescopes, both amateur and professional astronomers have recently imaged extreme weather features on Uranus.