Paranal Observatory
Paranal Observatory is an astronomical observatory operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). It is located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile on Cerro Paranal at altitude, south of Antofagasta. By total light-collecting area, it is the largest optical-infrared observatory in the Southern Hemisphere; worldwide, it is second to the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. The Very Large Telescope (VLT), the largest telescope on Paranal, is composed of four separate telescopes. In addition, the four main telescopes can be used simultaneously for extra light gathering capacity, and for interferometry. Four auxiliary telescopes of each are also part of the VLTI to make it available when the main telescopes are being used for other projects. The site also houses two survey telescopes with wide fields of view, the VISTA and the VLT Survey Telescope for surveying large areas of the sky; and two arrays of small telescopes called NGTS and SPECULOOS which are dedicated to sea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Paranal Top
Cerro Paranal is a mountain in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and is the home of the Paranal Observatory. Prior to the construction of the observatory, the summit was a horizontal control point with an elevation of ; now it is above sea level. It is the site of the Very Large Telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope. It is located south of Antofagasta and north of Taltal, as well as inland and west of highway B-710. Gallery Up high Cerro Paranal.jpg, Milky Way pictured above Cerro Paranal. Zodiacal Light Seen from Paranal.jpg, Zodiacal Light The zodiacal light (also called false dawn when seen before sunrise) is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. Brighter around the Sun, it appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun's direction ... seen from Paranal. References External links Cerro Paranal Paranal Paranal {{Antofagasta-geo-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cerro Armazones
Cerro Armazones is a mountain located in the Sierra Vicuña Mackenna of the Chilean Coast Range, approximately south-east of Antofagasta in the Antofagasta Region, Chile. Before construction started on the European Extremely Large Telescope, the summit was a horizontal control point with an elevation of . The new elevation is . It is located in a privileged zone for optical astronomy because it has 89% cloudless nights a year. It currently hosts the Hexapod-Telescope and other telescopes at the Cerro Armazones Observatory. On 26 April 2010, the European Southern Observatory Council selected Cerro Armazones as the site for the planned Extremely Large Telescope, and construction began in June 2014. Gallery File:Supermoon beckons in the new year.jpg, Supermoon rising up from behind Cerro Armazones. File:Cerro Armazones night-time panorama.jpg, Night-time panorama of Cerro Armazones File:Carving a Route to Armazones.jpg, Carving a route to Armazones, with Cerro Paranal and th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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University Of Liège
The University of Liège (french: Université de Liège), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French. As of 2020, ULiège is ranked in the 301–350 category worldwide according to ''Times Higher Education'', 451st by ''QS World University Rankings'', and between the 201st and 300th place by the '' Academic Ranking of World Universities''. More than 2,000 people, including academics, scientists and technicians, are involved in research of a wide variety of subjects from basic research to applied research. History The university was founded in 1817 by William I of the Netherlands, then King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and by his Minister of Education, Anton Reinhard Falck. The foundation of the university was the result of a long intellectual tradition which dates back to the origins of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. Beginning in the eleventh century, the influen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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SuperWASP
WASP or Wide Angle Search for Planets is an international consortium of several academic organisations performing an ultra-wide angle search for exoplanets using transit photometry. The array of robotic telescopes aims to survey the entire sky, simultaneously monitoring many thousands of stars at an apparent visual magnitude from about 7 to 13. WASP is the detection program composed of the Isaac Newton Group, IAC and six universities from the United Kingdom. The two continuously operating, robotic observatories cover the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, respectively. SuperWASP-North is at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the mountain of that name which dominates La Palma in the Canary Islands. WASP-South is at the South African Astronomical Observatory, Sutherland in the arid Roggeveld Mountains of South Africa. These use eight wide-angle cameras that simultaneously monitor the sky for planetary transit events and allow the monitoring of millions of stars simultaneously ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Transit Method
Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of detecting such a faint light source, the light from the parent star causes a glare that washes it out. For those reasons, very few of the exoplanets reported have been observed directly, with even fewer being resolved from their host star. Instead, astronomers have generally had to resort to indirect methods to detect extrasolar planets. As of 2016, several different indirect methods have yielded success. Established detection methods The following methods have at least once proved successful for discovering a new planet or detecting an already discovered planet: Radial velocity A star with a planet will move in its own small orbit in response to the planet's gravity. This leads to variations in the speed with which the star mov ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Super-Earth
A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below those of the Solar System's ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, which are 14.5 and 17 times Earth's, respectively. The term "super-Earth" refers only to the mass of the planet, and so does not imply anything about the surface conditions or habitability. The alternative term "gas dwarfs" may be more accurate for those at the higher end of the mass scale, although "mini-Neptunes" is a more common term. Definition In general, super-Earths are defined by their masses, and the term does not imply temperatures, compositions, orbital properties, habitability, or environments. While sources generally agree on an upper bound of 10 Earth masses (~69% of the mass of Uranus, which is the Solar System's giant planet with the least mass), the lower bound varies from 1 or 1.9 to 5, with various other definitions appearing in the popular media. The term "super-Earth" is also used by astronomers to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Exoplanet
An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, initially detected in 1988, was confirmed in 2003. There are many methods of detecting exoplanets. Transit photometry and Doppler spectroscopy have found the most, but these methods suffer from a clear observational bias favoring the detection of planets near the star; thus, 85% of the exoplanets detected are inside the tidal locking zone. In several cases, multiple planets have been observed around a star. About 1 in 5 Sun-like starsFor the purpose of this 1 in 5 statistic, "Sun-like" means G-type star. Data for Sun-like stars was not available so this statistic is an extrapolation from data about K-type stars. have an "Earth-sized"For the purpose of this 1 in 5 statistic, Earth-sized means 1–2 Earth radii. planet in the habitable z ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Next-Generation Transit Survey
The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground-based robotic search for exoplanets. The facility is located at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, about 2 km from ESO's Very Large Telescope and 0.5 km from the VISTA Survey Telescope. Science operations began in early 2015. The astronomical survey is managed by a consortium of seven European universities and other academic institutions from Chile, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Prototypes of the array were tested in 2009 and 2010 on La Palma, and from 2012 to 2014 at Geneva Observatory. The aim of NGTS is to discover super-Earths and exo-Neptunes transiting relatively bright and nearby stars with an apparent magnitude of up to 13. The survey uses transit photometry, which precisely measures the dimming of a star to detect the presence of a planet when it crosses in front of it. NGTS consists of an array of twelve commercial 0.2-metre telescopes ( f/2.8), each equipped w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Queen Mary University Of London
, mottoeng = With united powers , established = 1785 – The London Hospital Medical College1843 – St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College1882 – Westfield College1887 – East London College/Queen Mary College , type = Public research university , endowment = £41.3 million (2021) , budget = £512.5 million (2020-21) , chancellor = The Princess Royal(as Chancellor of the University of London) , principal = Colin Bailey , students = () , undergrad = () , postgrad = () , city = , administrative_staff = 4,620 , faculty = , affiliations = Alan Turing Institute ACU EUA IPEM LIDCRussell Group SEPnet SESUCLPartnersUniversities UKUniversity of London Institute in Paris , location = London, England, United Kingdom , campus = Urban , colours = , website = , logo = File:Queen Mary University of London logo.svg Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and previously Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public research university i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Astronomical Survey
An astronomical survey is a general map or image of a region of the sky (or of the whole sky) that lacks a specific observational target. Alternatively, an astronomical survey may comprise a set of images, spectra, or other observations of objects that share a common type or feature. Surveys are often restricted to one band of the electromagnetic spectrum due to instrumental limitations, although multiwavelength surveys can be made by using multiple detectors, each sensitive to a different bandwidth. Surveys have generally been performed as part of the production of an astronomical catalog. They may also search for transient astronomical events. They often use wide-field astrographs. Scientific value Sky surveys, unlike targeted observation of a specific object, allow astronomers to catalog celestial objects and perform statistical analyses on them without complex corrections for selection effects. In some cases, an astronomer interested in a particular object will find ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Field Of View
The field of view (FoV) is the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment. In the case of optical instruments or sensors it is a solid angle through which a detector is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. Humans and animals In the context of human and primate vision, the term "field of view" is typically only used in the sense of a restriction to what is visible by external apparatus, like when wearing spectacles or virtual reality goggles. Note that eye movements are allowed in the definition but do not change the field of view when understood this way. If the analogy of the eye's retina working as a sensor is drawn upon, the corresponding concept in human (and much of animal vision) is the visual field. It is defined as "the number of degrees of visual angle during stable fixation of the eyes".Strasburger, Hans; Pöppel, Ernst (2002). Visual Field. In G. Adelman & B.H. Smith (Eds): ''Encyclopedia of Neuroscience''; 3rd edition, on CD-ROM. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Adaptive Optics
Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology used to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of incoming wavefront distortions by deforming a mirror in order to compensate for the distortion. It is used in astronomical telescopes and laser communication systems to remove the effects of atmospheric distortion, in microscopy, optical fabrication and in retinal imaging systems to reduce optical aberrations. Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortions in a wavefront and compensating for them with a device that corrects those errors such as a deformable mirror or a liquid crystal array. Adaptive optics should not be confused with active optics, which works on a longer timescale to correct the primary mirror geometry. Other methods can achieve resolving power exceeding the limit imposed by atmospheric distortion, such as speckle imaging, aperture synthesis, and lucky imaging, or by moving outside the atmosphere with space telescopes, such as the Hubb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |