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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 simultaneousl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Astronomical Observatory
South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) is the national centre for optical and infrared astronomy in South Africa. It was established in 1972. The observatory is run by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. The facility's function is to conduct research in astronomy and astrophysics. The primary telescopes are located in Sutherland, which is from Observatory, Cape Town, where the headquarters is located. The SAAO has links worldwide for scientific and technological collaboration. Instrumental contributions from the South African Astronomical Observatory include the development of a spherical aberration corrector and the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). The Noon Gun on Cape Town's Signal Hill is fired remotely by a time signal from the Observatory. History The history of the SAAO began when the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope was founded in 1820, the first scientific institution in Africa. Construction of the main buildings was complet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Mechanics, Inc
Optical Mechanics, Inc. or OMI is a high-end American telescope and optics instrument manufacturer. OMI was founded in 2002 and produces observatory telescopes, Lidar telescopes, optical tube assemblies, telescope mirrors and reflective coatings for mirrors. OMI mirrors are used by other telescope makers such as Obsession Telescopes. Also taking on custom projects, they produced the 48-inch Dob, a aperture, 4, Dobsonian telescope called "Barbarella" and featured in Astronomy Technology Today magazine (June 2008 Issue). OMI is located in the US state of Iowa. OMI procured the assets of the former optics company Torus Technologies. OMI has an optics shop where it does work on telescopes. OMI produced the 60 cm, f/10 telescope for TUBITAK National Observatory in Turkey. OMI built the telescope mount for the SuperWASP telescope. The Robotic telescope Rigel Telescope was finished in 2002, a Talon program controlled 0.37-meter (14.5 in) F/14 telescope. OMI helped re-furbis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
La Palma
La Palma (, ), also known as ''La isla bonita'' () and officially San Miguel de La Palma, is the most north-westerly island of the Canary Islands, Spain. La Palma has an area of making it the fifth largest of the eight main Canary Islands. The total population at the end of 2020 was 85,840, of which 15,716 lived in the capital, Santa Cruz de La Palma and about 20,467 in Los Llanos de Aridane. Its highest mountain is the Roque de los Muchachos, at , being second among the peaks of the Canaries only to the peaks of the Teide massif on Tenerife. In 1815, the German geologist Leopold von Buch visited the Canary Islands. It was as a result of his visit to Tenerife, where he visited the Las Cañadas caldera, and then later to La Palma, where he visited the Taburiente caldera, that the Spanish word for cauldron or large cooking pot – "caldera" – was introduced into the geological vocabulary. In the center of the island is the Caldera de Taburiente National Park; one of four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Methods Of Detecting Extrasolar Planets
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] |
Euler Telescope
Leonhard Euler Telescope, or the Swiss EULER Telescope, is a national, fully automatic reflecting telescope, built and operated by the Geneva Observatory. It is located at an altitude of at ESO's La Silla Observatory site in the Chilean Norte Chico region, about 460 kilometers north of Santiago de Chile. The telescope, which saw its first light on 12 April 1998, is named after Swiss mathematician Leonhard Paul Euler. The Euler telescope uses the CORALIE instrument to search for exoplanets. In addition, the telescope uses the multi-purpose EulerCam (ecam), a high precision photometry instrument, and a smaller, piggyback mounted telescope, called "Pisco". Its first discovery was a planet in orbit around Gliese 86, determined to be a hot Jupiter with an orbital period of only 15.8 earth days and about four times the mass of Jupiter. Since then, many other exoplanets have been discovered or examined in follow-up observations. Together with the Mercator Telescope, Euler was part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transit Photometry
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] |
Earth Analog
An Earth analog, also called an Earth analogue, Earth twin, or second Earth, is a planet or moon with environmental conditions similar to those found on Earth. The term Earth-like planet is also used, but this term may refer to any terrestrial planet. The possibility is of particular interest to astrobiologists and astronomers under reasoning that the more similar a planet is to Earth, the more likely it is to be capable of sustaining complex extraterrestrial life. As such, it has long been speculated and the subject expressed in science, philosophy, science fiction and popular culture. Advocates of space colonization and space and survival have long sought an Earth analog for settlement. In the far future, humans might artificially produce an Earth analog by terraforming. Before the scientific search for and study of extrasolar planets, the possibility was argued through philosophy and science fiction. Philosophers have suggested that the size of the universe is such tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Newton Group Of Telescopes
The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes or ING consists of three optical telescopes: the William Herschel Telescope, the Isaac Newton Telescope, and the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, operated by a collaboration between the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Dutch NWO and the Spanish IAC. The telescopes are located at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands. These telescopes were formerly under the control of the Royal Greenwich Observatory before UK government cutbacks in 1998. See also * Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the g ... External linksING Homepage [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keele University
Keele University, officially known as the University of Keele, is a public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, Keele was granted university status by Royal Charter in 1962. Keele occupies a rural campus close to the village of Keele and consists of extensive woods, lakes and Keele Hall set in Staffordshire Potteries. It has a science park and a conference centre, making it the largest campus university in the UK. The university's School of Medicine operates the clinical part of its courses from a separate campus at the Royal Stoke University Hospital. The School of Nursing and Midwifery is based at the nearby Clinical Education Centre. History Establishment Cambridge and Oxford Extension Lectures had been arranged in the Potteries since the 1890s, but outside any organised educational framework or establishment. In 1904, funds were raised by l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gigabytes
The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix ''giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB. This definition is used in all contexts of science (especially data science), engineering, business, and many areas of computing, including storage capacities of hard drives, solid state drives, and tapes, as well as data transmission speeds. However, the term is also used in some fields of computer science and information technology to denote (10243 or 230) bytes, particularly for sizes of RAM. Thus, prior to 1998, some usage of ''gigabyte'' has been ambiguous. To resolve this difficulty, IEC 80000-13 clarifies that a ''gigabyte'' (GB) is 109 bytes and specifies the term ''gibibyte'' (GiB) to denote 230 bytes. These differences are still readily seen for example, when a 400 GB drive's capacity is displayed by Microsoft Windows as 372 G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open University
The Open University (OU) is a British Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off-campus; many of its courses (both undergraduate and postgraduate education, postgraduate) can also be studied anywhere in the world. There are also a number of full-time postgraduate research students based on the 48-hectare university campus in Milton Keynes, where they use the OU facilities for research, as well as more than 1,000 members of academic and research staff and over 2,500 administrative, operational and support staff. The OU was established in 1969 and was initially based at Alexandra Palace, north London, using the television studios and editing facilities which had been vacated by the BBC. The first students enrolled in January 1971. The university a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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