Podcasts about steward observatory

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Vivian Carvajal was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Aries with the Steward Observatory 90 inch Bok telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona when she spotted a fast moving point of light in a set of her images. Nearly 10 hours later it entered the Earth's atmosphere over Eastern Siberia north of Olekminsk

Looking halfway across the observable universe and expecting to see individual stars is considered a non-starter in astronomy, a bit like raising a pair of binoculars at the moon in hopes of making out individual grains of dust inside its craters. Thanks to a cosmic quirk of nature, however, an international team led by astronomers at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory did just that. Unseen stars beyond Dragon Arc Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, the research group observed a galaxy nearly 6.5 billion light-years from Earth, at a time when the universe was half its current age. In this distant galaxy, the team identified a large number of individual stars, made visible thanks to an effect known as gravitational lensing and JWST's high light collecting power. Published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the discovery marks a record-breaking achievement - the largest number of individual stars detected in the distant universe. It also provides a way to investigate one of the universe's greatest mysteries - dark matter. Most galaxies, including the Milky Way, contain tens of billions of stars. In nearby galaxies such as the Andromeda galaxy, astronomers can observe stars one by one. However, in galaxies billions of light-years away, stars appear blended together as their light needs to travel for billions of light-years before it reaches us, presenting a long-standing challenge to scientists studying how galaxies form and evolve. "To us, galaxies that are very far away usually look like a diffuse, fuzzy blob," said lead study author Yoshinobu Fudamoto, an assistant professor at Chiba University in Japan and a visiting scholar at Steward Observatory. "But actually, those blobs consist of many, many individual stars. We just can't resolve them with our telescopes." Recent advances in astronomy have opened new possibilities by leveraging gravitational lensing - a natural magnification effect caused by the strong gravitational fields of massive objects. As predicted by Albert Einstein, gravitational lenses can amplify the light of distant stars by factors of hundreds or even thousands, making them detectable with sensitive instruments like JWST. "These findings have typically been limited to just one or two stars per galaxy," Fudamoto said. "To study stellar populations in a statistically meaningful way, we need many more observations of individual stars." Fengwu Sun, a former U of A graduate student who is now a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, stumbled on a treasure trove of such stars when he was inspecting JWST images of a galaxy known as the Dragon Arc, located along the line of sight from Earth behind a massive cluster of galaxies called Abell 370. Due to its gravitational lensing effect, Abell 370 stretches the Dragon Arc's signature spiral into an elongated shape - like a hall of mirrors of cosmic proportions. In December 2022 and 2023, JWST obtained two pictures of the Dragon Arc. Within these images, astronomers counted 44 individual stars whose brightness changed over time due to variations in the gravitational lensing landscape. "This groundbreaking discovery demonstrates, for the first time, that studying large numbers of individual stars in a distant galaxy is possible," Sun said - as long as nature is there to lend a helping hand. However, even extremely strong gravitational magnification from a galaxy cluster is not sufficient to magnify individual stars in galaxies even farther away. In this case, the discovery was made possible by a serendipitous alignment of "lucky stars." "Inside the galaxy cluster, there are many stars floating around that are not bound by any galaxy," said co-author Eiichi Egami, a research professor at Steward Observatory. "When one of them happens to pass in front of the background star in the distant galaxy along the line of sight with Earth, it acts as a microlens, in addition to the macrolensing effect of the galaxy ...

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org Today's 2 topics: - My team, the Catalina Sky Survey, would not find a single asteroid without Steward Observatory's Mount Lemmon Operations, or Mtn Ops for short. Bottom line is that Mtn Ops does whatever it takes to make our Asteroid Hunting facilities continue to function. - Since 1900 there have been 11 close approaches by asteroids larger than 300 feet in diameter. One of them, the Tunguska Object was about 400 feet in diameter. It entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded with such force that it blew down trees over an 800 square mile area in 1908. Hopefully that will not happen again anytime soon.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, which includes researchers and telescopes of the University of Arizona, has uncovered strong and organized magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*. Seen in polarized light for the first time, this new view of the monster lurking at the center of our Milky Way galaxy has revealed a magnetic field structure strikingly similar to that of a much more massive black hole, known as M87*, at the center of the M87 galaxy, suggesting that strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes. This similarity also hints toward a hidden jet in Sgr A*. The results were published on March 27 in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Learning more about black holes and their magnetic fields Scientists unveiled the first image of Sgr A* - which is approximately 27,000 light-years from Earth - in 2022, revealing that while the Milky Way's supermassive black hole is more than a thousand times smaller and less massive than M87's, it looks remarkably similar. This made scientists wonder whether the two shared common traits outside of their looks. To find out, the team decided to study Sgr A* in polarized light. Previous studies of light around M87* revealed that the magnetic fields around the black hole giant allowed it to launch powerful jets of material back into the surrounding environment. Building on this work, the new images have revealed that the same may be true for Sgr A*. Boris Georgiev, an EHT postdoctoral researcher at UArizona's Steward Observatory and co-author on the study, said: "The consistency of magnetic field structures around Sgr A* and M87* suggests that the processes by which black holes feed and eject jets into their surroundings may be universal, despite their vast differences in size and mass." "What we're seeing now is that there are strong, twisted and organized magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy," said Sara Issaoun, NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and co-lead of the project. "Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarization structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we've learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them." Light is a moving oscillation of electric and magnetic fields that allows us to see objects. Sometimes, light oscillates in a preferred orientation, also known as polarized. Although polarized light surrounds us, to human eyes it is indistinguishable from "normal," or non-polarized, light. In the plasma around these black holes, particles whirling around magnetic field lines impart a polarization pattern perpendicular to the field. This allows astronomers to see in increasingly vivid detail what is happening in black hole regions and map their magnetic field lines. "By imaging polarized light from hot glowing gas near black holes, we are directly inferring the structure and strength of the magnetic fields that thread the flow of gas and matter that the black hole feeds on and ejects," said Angelo Ricarte, Harvard Black Hole Initiative Fellow and project co-lead. "Polarized light teaches us a lot more about the astrophysics, the properties of the gas and mechanisms that take place as a black hole feeds." But imaging black holes in polarized light isn't as easy as putting on a pair of polarized sunglasses, and this is particularly true of Sgr A*, which is changing so fast that it doesn't sit still for pictures. Imaging the supermassive black hole requires sophisticated tools above and beyond those previously used for capturing M87*, a much steadier target. Dan Marrone, EHT co-principal investigator and a co-author of the paper who is a professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory, and his team developed instruments that detected the polarized radio ...

This lecture was given on July 13th, 2023, at the "Thomistic Philosophy & Natural Science Symposium" at the Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events Speaker Bio: Dr. Serena Kim is an Associate Research Professor and Associate Astronomer at Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona. Dr. Kim's recent research includes star formation in the "H II" region to investigate whether or not initial mass function and circumstellar disk evolution are affected by the star forming environment. She has also recently conducted research on debris disks around sun-like stars to study whether our solar system is common or rare. Kim focuses on multi-wavelength observational studies of star forming regions using both ground-based and space telescopes. Star forming regions Kim is working on are young clusters where the triggered mode of star formation is suggested. Kim is a member of the Spitzer Legacy program Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems. She has led and participated in various projects including Kuiper-Belt analogs around sun-like stars.

Professor Chris Impey interviews Dr. Buddy Martin, Chief Polishing Scientist at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. Dr. Martin is the Project Scientist for Mirror Polishing at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. He leads the development of fabrication and testing for large optics, including the 8.4 m segments of the Giant Magellan Telescope. Previous manufacturing achievements include the two 8.4 m primary mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope, the 8.4 m combined primary and tertiary mirror for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, and thin deformable secondary mirrors for the LBT. Buddy has a Ph. D. in physics from Cambridge University and has been at Steward Observatory since 1986. He worked in radio astronomy before moving up to manufacturing optics.

Professor Chris Impey interviews Dr. Daniel Apai from Steward Observatory and the Lunar and Planetary Lab at The University of Arizona. Dr. Apai's research focuses on the formation and properties of exoplanetary systems, through direct observations of protoplanetary and debris disks and giant exoplanets. He is particularly interested in the formation of habitable planets and the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres, including the search for biomarkers.

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org Today's 2 topics: - Our robotic emissary Perseverance landed in the 28 mile wide Jezero Crater on 18 February of 2021. - On Kitt Peak in Arizona, the Steward Observatory's Bok telescope's 90 inch light collecting mirror enables the discovery, study, and tracking of space rocks 3 or 4 times fainter then possible with any of our other telescopes.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

My team, the Catalina Sky Survey, would not find a single asteroid without Steward Observatory's Mountain Lemmon Operations, or Mtn Ops for short. Bottom line is that Mtn Ops does whatever it takes to make our Asteroid Hunting facilities continue to function.

Study of correlation between optical flux and polarization variations in BL Lac objects by Bhoomika Rajput et al. on Tuesday 06 September Polarized radiation from blazars is one key piece of evidence for synchrotron radiation at low energy, which also shows variations. We present here our results on the correlation analysis between optical flux and polarization degree (PD) variations in a sample of 11 BL Lac objects using $sim$ 10 years of data from the Steward Observatory. We carried out the analysis on long-term ($sim$ several months) as well as on short-term timescales ($sim$ several days). On long-term timescales, for about 85% of the observing cycles, we found no correlation between optical flux and PD. On short-term timescales, we found a total of 58 epochs with a significant correlation between optical flux and PD, where both positive and negative correlation were observed. In addition, we also found a significant correlation between optical flux and $gamma$-ray flux variations on long-term timescales in 11% of the observing cycles. The observed PD variations in our study cannot be explained by changes in the power-law spectral index of the relativistic electrons in the jets. The shock-in-jet scenario is favoured for the correlation between optical flux and PD, whereas the anti-correlation can be explained by the presence of multi-zone emission regions. The varying correlated behaviour can also be explained by the enhanced optical flux caused by the newly developed radio knots in the jets and their magnetic field alignment with the large scale jet magnetic field. arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2209.02444v1

A nursery of stars. Galaxies 13 billion light years away. The Carina Nebula. These are some of the spectacular images captured by the James Webb Telescope from its vantage point one million miles away from earth. As the telescope's detail-saturated pictures were beamed across the world on Tuesday, they were met with awed silence as well as whoops of joy from scientists, some whose entire careers have been dedicated to the telescope. One of the most complicated spacecraft ever launched, the the telescope, which boasts a sun shield the size of a tennis court, will beam back images and data for the next 20 years. We'll talk to scientists who helped design the James Webb Telescope and find out what we can expect to see next. Guests: Marcia Rieke, Regents' professor of Astronomy and astronomer, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona - Dr. Rieke is the principal investigator for the NIRCam on the James Webb Space Telescope. Tom Greene, astrophysicist, Space Science and Astrobiology Division at NASA Ames Research Center - Dr. Greene works on the NIRCam and MIRI science instruments on the James Webb Telescope. Marina Koren, staff writer, The Atlantic - Koren covers space for the magazine.

A University of Arizona-led team of astronomers has created a detailed, three-dimensional image of a dying hypergiant star. The team, led by UArizona researchers Ambesh Singh and Lucy Ziurys, traced the distribution, directions and velocities of a variety of molecules surrounding a red hypergiant star known as VY Canis Majoris. Their findings, which they presented on June 13 at the 240th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California, offer insights, at an unprecedented scale, into the processes that accompany the death of giant stars. The work was done with collaborators Robert Humphreys from the University of Minnesota and Anita Richards from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Extreme supergiant stars known as hypergiants are very rare, with only a few known to exist in the Milky Way. Examples include Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the constellation Orion, and NML Cygni, also known as V1489 Cygni, in the constellation Cygnus. Unlike stars with lower masses – which are more likely to puff up once they enter the red giant phase but generally retain a spherical shape – hypergiants tend to experience substantial, sporadic mass loss events that form complex, highly irregular structures composed of arcs, clumps and knots. Located about 3,009 light-years from Earth, VY Canis Majoris – or VY CMa, for short – is a pulsating variable star in the slightly southern constellation of Canis Major. Spanning anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 astronomical units (with 1 AU being the average distance between Earth and the sun) VY CMa is possibly the most massive star in the Milky Way, according to Ziurys. “Think of it as Betelgeuse on steroids,” said Ziurys, a Regents Professor with joint appointments in UArizona Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Steward Observatory, both part of the College of Science. “It is much larger, much more massive and undergoes violent mass eruptions every 200 years or so.” The team chose to study VY CMa because it is one of the best examples of these types of stars. “We are particularly interested in what hypergiant stars do at end of their lives,” said Singh, a fourth-year doctoral student in Ziurys' lab. “People used to think these massive stars simply evolve into supernovae explosions, but we are no longer sure about that.” “If that were the case, we should see many more supernovae explosions across the sky,” Ziurys added. “We now think they might quietly collapse into black holes, but we don't know which ones end their lives like that, or why that happens and how.” Previous imaging of VY CMa with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and spectroscopy showed the presence of distinct arcs and other clumps and knots, many extending thousands of AU from the central star. In Search of Details on the Deaths of Rare Giant Stars To uncover more details of the processes by which hypergiant stars end their lives, the team set out to trace certain molecules around the hypergiant and map them to preexisting images of the dust, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. “Nobody has been able to make a complete image of this star,” Ziurys said, explaining that her team set out to understand the mechanisms by which the star sheds mass, which appear to be different from those of smaller stars entering their red giant phase at the end of their lives. “You don't see this nice, symmetrical mass loss, but rather convection cells that blow through the star's photosphere like giant bullets and eject mass in different directions,” Ziurys said. “These are analogous to the coronal arcs seen in the sun, but a billion times larger.” The team used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile to trace a variety of molecules in material ejected from the stellar surface. While some observations are still in progress, preliminary maps of sulfur oxide, sulfur dioxide, silicon oxide, phosphorous oxide and sodium chloride were obtained. From these data, the group constructed an image of the gl...

https://youtu.be/lGjlmSxX1pY Host: Fraser Cain ( @fcain )Special Guest: On May 12th, 2022, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released the first-ever direct image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Tonight we are very pleased to welcome Dr. Lia Medeiros, a member of the EHT Collaboration, to the WSH. If you watched the NSF's streaming Q&A session following their press conference, you may recognize Lia as a member of the panel.   Dr. Lia Medeiros is currently an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 2013, she completed her undergraduate education at the University of California-Berkeley in Physics and Astrophysics, and went on to earn her Masters and PhD (2019) in Physics from the University of California-Santa Barbara. After completing her classwork, Lia took advantage of the flexibility allowed by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and spent three years at the Steward Observatory at The University of Arizona and one year at the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard. Lia's PhD thesis was completed in collaboration with University of Arizona Professors Feryal Özel and Dimitrios Psaltis.   Lia was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and spent most of her childhood living in several cities in Brazil and a few years in Cambridge, England. One of the highlights of her career has been having the opportunity to engage with the scientific community in Brazil. She has given multiple talks in Brazil to both academic and public audiences in both English and Portuguese. When not simulating supermassive black holes, Lia loves horseback riding, practicing aerial silks, salsa dancing, and almost any type of art, especially ceramics and drawing.   To learn more about Lia, visit her website (https://www.liamedeiros.com/) - you will absolutely be mesmerized by the movie on her landing page!   You can stay up to date with Lia and her research by following her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/astronolia) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/lia.medeiros.... Regular Guests: Dr. Nick Castle ( @PlanetaryGeoDoc / https://wanderingsci.com/ )  Dave Dickinson ( http://astroguyz.com/ & @Astroguyz ) Pam Hoffman ( http://spacer.pamhoffman.com/ & http://everydayspacer.com/ & @EverydaySpacer ) This week's stories: - The Tau Hercules meteor storm! - Planets are in the morning… - Artemis names to the Moon! - Space Prize Global! - 2 Globe at Night projects. - Conjunctions! - Jun 21: the Summer Solstice! - NASA's objectives for the Moon & Mars exploration. - Boeing's CST 100 StarLiner.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

On May 12th, 2022, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released the first-ever direct image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Tonight we are very pleased to welcome Dr. Lia Medeiros, a member of the EHT Collaboration, to the WSH. If you watched the NSF's streaming Q&A session following their press conference, you may recognize Lia as a member of the panel. Dr. Lia Medeiros is currently an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 2013, she completed her undergraduate education at the University of California-Berkeley in Physics and Astrophysics, and went on to earn her Masters and PhD (2019) in Physics from the University of California-Santa Barbara. After completing her classwork, Lia took advantage of the flexibility allowed by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and spent three years at the Steward Observatory at The University of Arizona and one year at the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard. Lia's PhD thesis was completed in collaboration with University of Arizona Professors Feryal Özel and Dimitrios Psaltis. Lia was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and spent most of her childhood living in several cities in Brazil and a few years in Cambridge, England. One of the highlights of her career has been having the opportunity to engage with the scientific community in Brazil. She has given multiple talks in Brazil to both academic and public audiences in both English and Portuguese. When not simulating supermassive black holes, Lia loves horseback riding, practicing aerial silks, salsa dancing, and almost any type of art, especially ceramics and drawing. To learn more about Lia, visit her website — you will absolutely be mesmerized by the movie on her landing page! You can stay up to date with Lia and her research by following her on Twitter and Facebook. **************************************** The Weekly Space Hangout is a production of CosmoQuest. Want to support CosmoQuest? Here are some specific ways you can help: Subscribe FREE to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/cosmoquest Subscribe to our podcasts Astronomy Cast and Daily Space where ever you get your podcasts! Watch our streams over on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/cosmoquestx – follow and subscribe! Become a Patreon of CosmoQuest https://www.patreon.com/cosmoquestx Become a Patreon of Astronomy Cast https://www.patreon.com/astronomycast Buy stuff from our Redbubble https://www.redbubble.com/people/cosmoquestx Join our Discord server for CosmoQuest - https://discord.gg/X8rw4vv Join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew! - http://www.wshcrew.space/ Don't forget to like and subscribe! Plus we love being shared out to new people, so tweet, comment, review us... all the free things you can do to help bring science into people's lives.

IC 4592：藍色馬頭反射星雲 https://apod.tw/daily/20210705/ 你敢有看著馬頭？毋閣你看著 ê 毋是 tī 獵戶座 內底彼个有名 ê 馬頭星雲，是一个閣較暗 ê 星雲。愛用閣較深 ê 顯像才會當看著 咱熟似 ê 形式。這幅圖 內底 ê 分子雲複合體 ê 主要部份是一个 反射星雲，伊 ê 編號是 IC 4592。反射星雲實際上是 ùi 足幼 ê 塗粉 組成 ê。一般來講 in 是有較暗，毋閣 in 看起來嘛有較藍。這是反射附近較高能恆星發出 ê 可見光。Tī 這幅圖內底，發射光主要 ê 來源是 tī 馬 眼 ê 一粒恆星。這粒恆星是 天蠍座 Nu 星群 ê 一部份，是蠍仔星座（天蠍座）內底足光 ê 恆星系統內底 ê 其中一粒。你閣會當看著第二 反射星雲是 IC 4601，伊 to̍h tī 這幅圖中央倚正爿彼兩粒恆星 ê 外圍。 ——— 這是 NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day ê 台語文 podcast 原文版：https://apod.nasa.gov/ 台文版：https://apod.tw/ 今仔日 ê 文章： 影像：Adam Block, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona 音樂：PiSCO - 鼎鼎 聲優：阿錕 翻譯：An-Li Tsai (NCU) 原文：https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210705.html Powered by Firstory Hosting

On Kitt Peak in Arizona, the Steward Observatory's Bok telescope's 90 inch light collecting mirror enables the discovery, study, and tracking of space rocks 3 or 4 times fainter then possible with any of our other telescopes. Over all our team, the Catalina Sky Survey, has used the 90 inch Bok telescope to discover 36 Earth approaching asteroids.

What Went Wrong With Jackson, Mississippi’s Water? Residents of Jackson, Mississippi have been dealing with a water crisis since a storm rolled through town on February 15th. The city’s water system was damaged, leaving thousands of residents without running water at home. People have relied on water distribution sites to get by, and even those who can still use their taps are on boil water notice. Impacted residents are largely low-income, and the limited access to water has raised worries about staying safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before this fiasco, Jackson’s water system was in need of a change. Boil water advisories were common, and many of the city’s pipes date back to the 1950s. Water service is expected to be restored this week, but getting the taps running again will just be a Band-Aid: A true overhaul would require millions, if not billions of dollars. Mississippi Public Broadcasting reporter Kobee Vance joins guest host John Dankosky to discuss what’s happening in Jackson, and why its infrastructure was particularly vulnerable to this crisis.   Spinning Glass To See The Stars Last weekend, a giant furnace built under the east stands of the University of Arizona football stadium began to spin. That furnace contained some 20 tons of high-purity borosilicate glass, heated to 1,165 degrees C. As the glass melted, it flowed into gaps in a mold. The centrifugal force of the spinning furnace spread the material up the edges of the mold, forming the curved surface of a huge mirror, with a diameter of 8.4 meters. The piece is just one of seven sections that will eventually form the 25-meter primary mirror of the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile. It’s not a fast process—it will take several months to cool, and then another two years to measure, grind, and polish. When that’s complete, the surface of the mirror segment will be accurate to within twenty-five nanometers. Steward Observatory mirror polishing program project scientist Buddy Martin says that when it’s complete, the Giant Magellan Telescope should be ten times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope—if it was positioned in Washington, DC, it would be able to make out a softball in the hand of a pitcher in San Francisco. Martin talks with SciFri’s Charles Bergquist about the mirror production process, and the challenges of working with glass on massive scales. Watch a video and see photos of the process at scienefriday.com.   It’s Time To Rethink Shark Sex—With Females In Mind Sharks, rays, and skates—all fish in the subclass Elasmobranchii—are a beautifully diverse collection of animals. One big way they differ is in how they reproduce. They lay eggs, like traditional fish, and let them mature in a select corner of the ocean. Or, they might let the eggs hatch inside their bodies. But they can also give live birth to pups gestated like mammals: with an umbilical cord and a placenta in a uterus. It doesn’t end there. These fish, like many other members of the animal kingdom, have two uteruses. Females are capable of reproducing asexually, without help from a male. As genetic sequencing has advanced, researchers have been finding another curious pattern: Many litters of pups will have more than one father, a phenomenon known as multiple paternity. Evolutionary ecologists seeking to explain why sharks would use this strategy of multiple paternity have hypothesized it’s one of convenience for females. In species with aggressive and competitive mating practices, like many sharks and rays, it’s possible females find it saves them precious resources to acquiesce to multiple males. But what if there’s something in it for the female, and her likelihood of having successful, biologically fit offspring? That’s the question a team of researchers sought to answer in new research published in Molecular Ecology this month, where they asked what kinds of physiological mechanisms a female shark or ray might use to wield agency in her own reproduction. The researchers also write that a male-dominated field may be more likely to miss a female-driven reproductive strategy, and push for more study of female reproductive biology. John Dankosky talks to the lead author on the research, Georgia Aquarium shark biologist Kady Lyons, about the vast wonderland of reproductive strategies in this fish subclass—and what a history of male-centered research may have missed.   What Next For The Fully Vaccinated? In the U.S., vaccines have been rolling out since December. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 95 million doses have been administered which equates to over 18% of the population. This week, the agency also put out guidelines for those who have been fully vaccinated. Sophie Bushwick of Scientific American fills us in on those guidelines and also talks about research on the effectiveness of mask mandates and a headless sea slug.    

In this podcast Melanie Boylan had a chat with Kevin Wagner a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. They discussed his successful work with the experiment/instrument is called “NEAR”: New Earths in the Alpha Centauri region. Dr. Wagner's research focuses on directly detecting and studying planets around nearby stars, with a specific focus on finding and characterizing potentially life supporting planets. His team's recent work has enabled imaging planets that are approximately Neptune-sized in the habitable zone of the closest Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri, which shows that imaging smaller, potentially Earth-like planets is closely within reach. Dr. Wagner grew up in Kentucky, USA, and in his spare time enjoys exploring the mountains and deserts that are also home to the observatories and giant cacti of Southern Arizona. kevinwagner@arizona.edu

This week, Host Jillian Bartsch talks with Kevin Wagner, a Sagan Fellow in NASA's Hubble Fellowship Program at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory. Wagner discusses his research on looking for new ways to find Earthlike planets and what they look for in a planet. He also discusses the technology he uses and the challenges of finding an Earthlike planet. Behind the Beaker is a podcast about the unbelievable science and even more unbelievable scientists behind it at the University of Arizona. Weekly episodes will feature scientists from across the board. This podcast is a Daily Wildcat production created by Alexandre Pere in association with Arizona Student Media. The Daily Wildcat "Online all the time, at dailywildcat.com." Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @DailyWildcat RATE, COMMENT AND SHARE! *Intro music by purpleplanetmusic.com

Erika Hamden (@erikahamden) is an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona and Steward Observatory and leads the team building FIREBall, a telescope that hangs from a giant balloon at the very edge of space and looks for clues about how stars are created. She's a 2019 TED fellow and her research focuses on developing ultraviolet (UV) detector technology, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV/VIS) instrumentation and spectroscopy, and galaxy evolution.To listen to the entire episode, visit: https://disruptors.fm/124-how-astrophysicists-understand-our-origins-and-search-for-alien-life-while-building-a-better-world-for-all-of-us-erika-hamden/

Erika Hamden (@erikahamden) is an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona and Steward Observatory and leads the team building FIREBall, a telescope that hangs from a giant balloon at the very edge of space and looks for clues about how stars are created. She's a 2019 TED fellow and her research focuses on developing ultraviolet (UV) detector technology, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV/VIS) instrumentation and spectroscopy, and galaxy evolution.* The evolution of astrophysics* How space exploration advances in today's booming business world* Why fundamental science and research is so critical to humanity's future* Which technologies scare Erika the most and why* The value of astronauts and off-Earth habitats* What to do about data privacy and our ads-based economy* Why Erika believes there's intelligent extraterrestrial life out there* What to think about Trump and the impacts on science and tech* How do stars form and accidental discoveries occur* Physics role in military action* The importance of putting yourself and life first and foremost* Why we are both more than a little worried about social media* What most people don't know about funding scientific research

My team, the Catalina Sky Survey, would not find a single asteroid without Steward Observatory's Mountain Lemmon Operations, or Mtn Ops for short. Bottom line is that Mtn Ops does whatever it takes to make our Asteroid Hunting facilities continue to function.

In this episode of Talk Nerdy, Cara is joined by Dr. Kevin Hainline, a postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics at the Steward Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. They discuss the nature of black holes and galaxies, the value of science communication, and his work on the upcoming JWST NIRCam (the imager for the James Webb Space Telescope). Follow Kevin: @Kevin_Hainline.

In this episode of Talk Nerdy, Cara is joined by Dr. Kevin Hainline, a postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics at the Steward Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. They discuss the nature of black holes and galaxies, the value of science communication, and his work on the upcoming JWST NIRCam (the imager for the James Webb Space Telescope). Follow Kevin: @Kevin_Hainline.

Una conferenza (EBI2014), sponsorizzata anche dalla Specola Vaticana e dallo Steward Observatory in Arizona, ha messo assieme 160 rappresentanti della ricerca esobiologica che hanno discusso della vita oltre la Terra, una delle grandi sfide della scienza moderna.http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/news/jill-tarter-speak-ebi2014-conferencehttp://ebi2014.org/https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/seminars/featured-seminar-channels/conferences-and-workshops/2014/3/16/search-for-life-beyond-the-solar-system-conference/https://connect.arc.nasa.gov/ebi2014/

Una conferenza (EBI2014), sponsorizzata anche dalla Specola Vaticana e dallo Steward Observatory in Arizona, ha messo assieme 160 rappresentanti della ricerca esobiologica che hanno discusso della vita oltre la Terra, una delle grandi sfide della scienza moderna. http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/news/jill-tarter-speak-ebi2014-conference http://ebi2014.org/ https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/seminars/featured-seminar-channels/conferences-and-workshops/2014/3/16/search-for-life-beyond-the-solar-system-conference/ https://connect.arc.nasa.gov/ebi2014/

Episode 005 of the Project Management show features Joe McMullin, Project Manager for the DKIST project. I have been fortunate enough to work on ATST/DKIST since 2006. After listening to Joe's podcast it will be easy for everyone to understand why I enjoy what I do so much. Very cool project working with the best people in the business! About Joe: Joe is the Project Manager for the multi-decade, $350M Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) Joe earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1994 (in physics and chemistry of nearby star forming regions). Since then, his career has been dedicated to the development and enhancement of new astronomical facilities. He worked at Steward Observatory on the commissioning of the Heinrich Hertz Telescope. Joe worked at NRAO for 14 years, where he first went astray from science and into science management, supporting and then leading the effort to develop a data analysis package for NRAO instruments. While at NRAO, he moved to Chile to lead the Assembly, Integration and Verification effort for ALMA and then lead the commissioning effort for the (then) EVLA (now the JVLA) and its early operations. In 2011 Joe became the Project Manager for DKIST which will be the world's largest solar telescope upon completion. This episode is sponsored by Bravo Reporting Systems

Dr. Kurtis Williams is an Assistant Professor at Texas A and M University, Commerce. He received his Master's and PhD degrees in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and afterward served as a Research Associate at the Steward Observatory in Tucson. Kurtis was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral fellowship and completed his postdoctoral research at the University of Texas, Austin before accepting his current position. Kurtis is here with us today to tell us all about his journey through life and science.

Join Thomas Fleming, Laird Close, W. John Cocke on the 90th anniversary of the dedication of the Stewart Observatory. Telling the history of the Stewart Observatory from it's inception to now.

Dr. Fleming's areas of research include X-ray emission from stars, the nearby stars, very low-mass stars, and white dwarfs. Since 1999, he has been resposible for public outreach and coordination of the astronomy general education program at Steward Observatory. In particular, he serves as organizer and host of the Steward Observatory Public Evening Lecture Series, the observatory's major vehicle for disseminating information on astronomy and space science to the general public since 1922.

Andrew Skemer is an astronomy postdoc at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, and the Instrument Scientist for the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI). LBTI combines the light of the two 8.4 meter LBT primary mirrors to create images with the resolution of a ~23 meter telescope. Currently, he is working on planning a ~60 night NASA survey to look for extrasolar planets and measure the exozodiacal light around a large sample of nearby stars. His research interests are: direct imaging and photometric, characterization of brown dwarfs and exoplanets, mid-infrared adaptive optics and instrumentation, circumstellar disks, dust-grain growth, and planet formation, and statistics and Monte Carlo techniques.

Before stars burn out, they inflate to become red giants. The outer hydrogen envelope of these massive stars expand and can swallow almost anything that stands in its path, including smaller planets. Dr. Elizabeth Green, an associate astronomer at the Steward Observatory, was part of the research team that recently discovered two planets, roughly the size of Earth, that remained intact after being swallowed. During the study of the pulsations of subdwarf B star KOI 55 of the Cygnus constellation, researchers discovered that the star is, in fact, a host star that is orbited by planets KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02. The star’s pulsations were being monitored via NASA’s Kepler telescope. French astronomer Stephane Charpinet of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, who led the research team that discovered these planets, predicted stars would pulsate years ago. Observing a star’s pulsations can aid researchers in their quest to understand what goes on inside a star.

Dr. Fleming's areas of research include X-ray emission from stars, the nearby stars, very low-mass stars, and white dwarfs. Since 1999, he has been resposible for public outreach and coordination of the astronomy general education program at Steward Observatory. In particular, he serves as organizer and host of the Steward Observatory Public Evening Lecture Series, the observatory's major vehicle for disseminating information on astronomy and space science to the general public since 1922. Presented Mon, Sept. 19, 2011.

Dr. Smith is Assistant Professor in the University of Arizona's Dept. of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. He received his Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of Minnesota. His research interests involve evolution of massive stars, Supernovae and eruptive transients, star forming regions and interstellar medium and circumstellar material.

Abstract: With the almost seamless transition from the Spitzer Space Telescope cryogenic mission (2003-2009) to the operation of the Herschel Space Observatory (2009-), it is no exaggeration to say that we have been enjoying a golden age of space infrared (IR)/submillimeter (Submm) astronomy in recent years. In this talk, I will report the results from the following three large extragalactic programs our group is currently conducting here at the Steward Observatory: (1) Herschel-Spitzer observations of galaxy clusters: gravitationally lensed galaxies and IR/Submm-bright cluster members (2) HST-Spitzer observations of 5.7

In celebration of Kitt Peak's 50th anniversary, Aden Meinel, founding Director of the Optical Sciences Center, third Directory of Steward Observatory, and first Director of Kitt Peak National Observatory, spoke about the history of the selection of Kitt Peak as the location for a national observatory and Bernard Siquieros, Education Curator of the Tohono O'Odham Nation's Cultural Center and Museum, shared a Tohono O'Odham perspective on the meaning and history of Iolkam Du'ag, or Kitt Peak, and the Baboquivari Range. March 22, 2010.

Dr. Zubludoff is Professor of Astronomy and Astronomer, Steward Observatory, at the University of Arizona. Her research is principally in extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology, including: analyzing strong gravitational lenses to constrain the expansion rate of the Universe, the dark energy, and the properties of the dark matter halos of galaxies; measuring extremely faint optical and X-ray light in groups and clusters of galaxies to better compare their baryon content with the Universal value; surveying galaxies across environments and redshift to isolate those factors most important in driving galaxy evolution; examining the transformation of spirals into early type galaxies via the post-starburst phase of galaxy evolution. Nov. 23, 2009. ✤ studying the nuclei of merging galaxies to determine the implications for black hole evolution ✤ exploring the formation of galaxies and large-scale structure via the simulation and detection of Lyman-alpha emitting sources in the distant Universe