http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases Cool Astronomy News from the UH IfA http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/robo_ao2/ Wed, 05 Jul 2017 09:15:00 -1000 Astronomer Christoph Baranec, at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy (IfA), has been awarded a nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build an autonomous adaptive optics system called Robo-AO-2 for the UH telescope. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/herschel_lirgs/ Tue, 06 Jun 2017 09:15:00 -1000 An international team of astronomers, including IfA graduate student Jason Chu and Astronomer David Sanders, has used the Herschel Space Observatory to take far-infrared images of the 200 most infrared-luminous galaxies in the Local Universe. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/bdmasslimit/ Mon, 05 Jun 2017 09:15:00 -1000 A team of astronomers, lead by IfA graduate Trent Dupuy and IfA astronomy Michael Liu, have shown what separates real stars from the wannabes. Not in Hollywood, but out in the universe. They found that an object must weigh at least 70 Jupiters in order to start hydrogen fusion. If it weighs less, the star does not ignite and becomes a brown dwarf instead. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/water-origins/ 12 November 2015 09:00:00 HST Water covers more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, but its exact origins are still something of a mystery. Scientists have long been uncertain whether water was present at the formation of the planet, or if it arrived later, perhaps carried by comets and meteorites. Now researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, using advanced ion-microprobe instrumentation, have found evidence that Earth’s water was a part of our planet from the beginning. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/493Griseldis/ 12 November 2015 07:00:00 HST The main-belt asteroid (493) Griseldis was probably hit by another object last March. The results were reported on November 12 at the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society near Washington, DC. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/TB145/ 22 October 2015 18:00:00 HST A large near-Earth asteroid named 2015 TB145, discovered by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 Telescope atop Haleakala, Maui on October 10, will pass close to Earth on October 31. The asteroid has a diameter of approximately 400 meters (1,300 feet), and will pass within approximately 480,000 km (300,000 miles) of Earth.  There is no possibility of this object impacting Earth. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Robo-AO-KP/ 12 October 2015 10:00:00 HST The world’s first robotic laser adaptive optics system, developed by a team led by University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer Christoph Baranec, will soon find a new home at the venerable 2.1-meter (83-inch) telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. This system, renamed Robo-AO KP, will be the world’s first dedicated adaptive optics astronomical observatory and will allow astronomers to take an unprecedented number of highly detailed images of a wide range of celestial objects. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Kepler453b/ 12 August 2015 09:00:00 HST A team of astronomers at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Honolulu, including University of Hawaii astronomer Nader Haghighipour, will announce on August 14 the discovery of the tenth transiting circumbinary planet. Reminiscent of the fictional planet Tatooine in “Star Wars,” circumbinary planets orbit two stars and have two “suns” in their skies. The new planet, known as Kepler-453 b, takes 240 days to orbit its parent stars. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/alpha_centauri/ Wed, 5 August 2015 16:00:00 HST Scientists from the University of Hawaii are part of a team headed by Prof. Dr. Svetlana Berdyugina, a visiting scientist at the University of Hawaii NASA Astrobiology Institute, that has proposed a sensitive technique for detecting life on other planets. This technique could be instrumental in searching for life in the planetary system nearest to the sun, Alpha Centauri, with existing telescopes. http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2015/07/29/uh-astronomer-to-head-international-astronomical-division-on-planetary-science-and-astrobiology// Wed, 29 July 2015 14:00:00 HST Nader Haghighipour, an astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy and the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, has been elected president of Division F (planetary systems and astrobiology) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for 2015–18. Haghighipour will have an important role in promoting and encouraging the study of planetary systems around our sun and outside our solar system, as well as the search for life in the universe, one of the most vital fields of astronomy today. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Zahid_Trumpler/ Mon, 13 July 2015 10:00:00 HST For the second year in a row, a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Institute for Astronomy (IfA) has received the Robert J. Trumpler Award, given by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific to recognize a recent PhD thesis considered unusually important to astronomy. The 2015 recipient is Dr. H. Jabran Zahid, who received his PhD in 2014. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/2015solar_eclipse/ Tues, 29 April 2015 13:00:00 HST The international Solar Wind Sherpas team, led by Dr. Shadia Habbal of the University of Hawaii at Manoa Institute for Astronomy, braved Arctic weather to successfully observe the total solar eclipse of March 20 from Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago east of northern Greenland. Their preliminary results are being presented at the Triennial Earth-Sun Summit in Indianapolis. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/HD7924/ Tues, 28 April 2015 13:00:00 HST A team of astronomers using ground-based telescopes in Hawaii, California, and Arizona recently discovered a planetary system orbiting a nearby star that is only 54 light-years away. All three planets orbit their star at a distance closer than Mercury orbits the sun, completing their orbits in just 5, 15, and 24 days. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/ColdSpot/ Sun, 19 April 2015 20:00:00 HST In 2004, astronomers examining a map of the radiation leftover from the Big Bang (the cosmic microwave background, or CMB) discovered the Cold Spot, a larger-than-expected unusually cold area of the sky. The physics surrounding the Big Bang theory predicts warmer and cooler spots of various sizes in the infant universe, but a spot this large and this cold was unexpected. Now, a team of astronomers led by Dr. István Szapudi of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa may have found an explanation for the existence of the Cold Spot, which Szapudi says may be “the largest individual structure ever identified by humanity.” http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Tully_endowment/Award-winning_Hawaii_astronomer_funds_endowment.pdf Tue, 14 April 2015 14:50:00 HST IfA astronomer R. Brent Tully made world news when he identified the full extent of our home supercluster of 100 thousand galaxies and named it Laniakea. The recipient of numerous prestigious astronomical awards, he has chosen to build on IfA’s global prominence by using $264,000 of his prize money to establish the R. Brent Tully Distinguished Visitors Endowed Fund for the Institute for Astronomy. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/fastest_star// Wed, 5 March 2015 09:00:00 HST A team of astronomers, including University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer Eugene Magnier, used the 10-meter Keck II and Pan-STARRS1 telescopes in Hawaii to find a star that breaks the galactic speed record. It travels at about 1,200 kilometers per second (about 2.7 million mph), a speed that will enable the star to escape from our Milky Way galaxy. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/planet_in_quad_star_system/ Wed, 4 March 2015 09:00:00 HST Researchers wanting to know more about the influences of multiple stars on exoplanets have come up with a new case study: a planet in a four-star system. The newfound four-star planetary system, called 30 Ari, is located 136 light-years away in the constellation Aries. The system’s gaseous planet is enormous, with 10 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits its primary star every 335 days. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Voyager Thurs, 5 February 2015 14:00:00 HST Edward Stone, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, former director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and chief scientist for the Voyager Mission, will explain the spacecraft’s journey in the next Sheraton Waikiki Explorers of the Universe public lecture, “The Voyager Journey to Interstellar Space,” at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Campus Center Ballroom on Wednesday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. Campus parking is $6. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/K2-epic201 Fri, 16 January 2015 10:00:00 HST Extrasolar planets are being discovered by the hundreds, but are any of these newfound worlds really like Earth? A planetary system recently discovered by the Kepler spacecraft will help resolve this question. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/K2_Discovery/ Thurs, 18 December 2014 10:00:00 HST Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered a new super-Earth using data collected during its “second life,” known as the K2 mission. University of Hawaii astronomer Christoph Baranec supplied confirming data with his Robo-AO instrument mounted on the Palomar 1.5-meter telescope, and former UH graduate student Brendan Bowler, now a Joint Center for Planetary Astronomy postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, provided additional confirming observations using the Keck II adaptive optics system on Maunakea. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/SDSS1133/ Fri, 19 November 2014 8:00:00 HST An international team of researchers analyzing decades of observations from many facilities, including the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on Haleakala, as well as NASA’s Swift satellite, has discovered an unusual source of light in a galaxy some 90 million light-years away. The team was led by Michael Koss, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa during most of the time the study was ongoing. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/breakthrough/ Fri, 14 November 2014 7:00:00 HST UH astronomer John Tonry has been named a recipient of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than slowing as had been long assumed. He shares the award with the other members of the High-Redshift Supernova Search Team and with members of the Supernova Cosmology Project. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/oort_objects/ Mon, 10 November 2014 13:00:00 HST Astronomers are announcing today the discovery of two unusual objects in comet-like orbits that originate in the Oort cloud but with almost no activity, giving scientists a first look at their surfaces. These results, presented today at the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Tucson, Arizona, are particularly intriguing because the surfaces are different from what astronomers expected, and they give us clues about the movement of material in the early solar system as the planets were assembled. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/T60/ Wed, 08 September 2014 13:00:00 HST A Japanese planetary research observatory was blessed and dedicated today at Haleakala Observatories on the Hawaiian island of Maui in the presence of about 25 scientists and administrators from the United States and Japan. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Laniakea/ Wed, 03 September 2014 07:00:00 HST University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer R. Brent Tully, who recently shared the 2014 Gruber Cosmology Prize and the 2014 Victor Ambartsumian International Prize, has led an international team of astronomers in defining the contours of the immense supercluster of galaxies containing our own Milky Way. They have named the supercluster “Laniakea,” meaning “immense heaven” in Hawaiian. The paper explaining this work is the cover story of the September 4 issue of the prestigious journal Nature. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Robo-AO/ Mon, 04 August 2014 07:15:00 HST An international team, including Dr. Christoph Baranec of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Institute for Astronomy, is using the world’s first robotic laser adaptive optics system—Robo-AO— to explore thousands of exoplanet systems (planets around other stars) at resolutions approaching those of the Hubble Space Telescope. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Ebeling-MACSJ0416/ Thurs, 24 July 2014 07:00:00 HST An international team of astronomers, including Dr. Harald Ebeling of the University of Hawaii at Manoa Institute for Astronomy, has used the Hubble Space Telescope to map the mass within a galaxy cluster, originally discovered with Maunakea telescopes, more precisely than ever before. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/AmbartsumianPrize/ Fri, 18 July 2014 12:20:00 HST University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer Dr. R. Brent Tully is a co-winner of the 2014 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize. Established in 2009 by the president of Armenia in commemoration of the great Armenian astrophysicist, it has been awarded every two years since 2010 to those who have made an important contribution in astronomy/astrophysics and related sciences. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/CryoNIRSP Tues, 17 July 2014 10:15:00 HST The National Science Foundation and the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) have announced the award of a major contract to the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy to build the Cryogenic Near Infrared Spectropolarimeter (CryoNIRSP) for the new solar telescope, which is now under construction on Haleakala. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/HydrogenMolecules Tues, 14 July 2014 10:00:00 HST An international team of astronomers, including IfA astronomer Regina Jorgenson, has discovered that gas around young galaxies is almost barren, devoid of the seeds from which new stars are thought to form—molecules of hydrogen. Without starlight to see them directly, the team observed the young galaxies’ outskirts in silhouette. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Tully-Gruber/ Tues, 10 June 2014 09:00:00 HST University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer R. Brent Tully is one of four recipients of the 2014 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize for his role in understanding the structure and evolution of the nearby universe. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/filippenko/ Thurs, 01 May 2014 15:00:00 HST Professor Alex Filippenko, an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a world-renowned expert on cosmology, will give the next Sheraton Waikiki Explorers of the Universe public lecture entitled “The Big Bang Theory, Inflation, and the Multiverse: An English Major’s Introduction to the Birth and Early Evolution of the Universe” on Saturday, May 10, at 7:30 p.m. in Kennedy Theatre on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/OH2014/ Mon, 24 March 2014 09:24:00 HST Want to learn about real planets with two suns like the fictional planet Tatooine in the Star Wars movies? Then come to the UH Manoa Institute for Astronomy’s annual Open House on Sunday, April 6, from 11a.m. to 4 p.m. at our Manoa headquarters, 2680 Woodlawn Drive. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Cozzarelli Tues, 18 March 2014 09:00:00 HST A paper co-authored by University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer Andrew Howard and visiting graduate student Erik Petigura has won the Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences. This prize recognizes six outstanding papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the major scientific disciplines covered by that journal. Their paper titled “The prevalence of Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars” was judged the top paper in the physical and mathematical sciences in 2013. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Baranec-Sloan Tues, 18 February 2014 09:00:00 HST Dr. Christoph Baranec of the University of Hawaii at Manoa Institute for Astronomy (IfA) has been selected as one of 126 recipients of a 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today in New York. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Sanders-MassiveGalaxies/ Wed, 29 January 2014 09:15:00 HST University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer David Sanders is one of a group of scientists who have combined observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer and Herschel infrared space telescopes, and ground-based telescopes in Hawaii to assemble a coherent picture of the formation history of the most massive galaxies in the universe, from their initial burst of violent star formation through their appearance as high stellar-density galaxy cores and to their ultimate destiny as giant ellipticals. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/NormalGalaxyEarlyUniverse/ Thurs, 09 January 2014 09:15:00 HST University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer Regina Jorgenson has obtained the first image that shows the structure of a normal galaxy in the early universe. The results were presented at the winter American Astronomical Society meeting being held this week near Washington, DC. http://aura-astronomy.org/news/news.asp?newsID=340 Mon, 16 December 2013 09:30:00 HST The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) have renamed the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope under construction in Maui, Hawaii, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. The name memorializes the late senator's profound commitment to fundamental scientific research and discovery, particularly in astronomy. http://www.naoj.org/Pressrelease/2013/12/05/index.html Thurs, 5 December 2013 09:00:00 HST Using the Fiber-Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS) mounted on the Subaru Telescope, a team of astronomers participating in the Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS) has found that galaxies, over nine billion years ago, provided a nurturing environment for the birth of new stars at remarkable rates while doing so in an orderly manner. Even at these early times, there are signs of maturation, since the surroundings of massive galaxies were relatively dusty and enriched by heavier elements. "FMOS has clearly revolutionized our ability to study how galaxies form and evolve across cosmic time," says David Sanders, the principal investigator of the FMOS-COSMOS project at the IfA, "It is currently the most powerful instrument we have to study the large numbers of objects needed to understand galaxies of all sizes, shapes and masses -- from the largest ellipticals to the smallest dwarfs." http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Hall-AAAS/ Mon, 25 November 2013 06:00:00 HST Dr. Donald N. B. Hall of the University of Hawaii at Manoa has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. As part of the astronomy section, Hall was elected as an AAAS Fellow “for distinguished contributions to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomy at the University of Hawaii and on Mauna Kea, and infrared telescope, instrument, and sensor technology.” http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Kepler-78b/ Mon, 04 November 2013 10:00:00 HST Astronomers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the University of California, Berkeley now estimate that one in five stars like the sun have planets about the size of Earth and a surface temperature conducive to life. This conclusion is based on a statistical analysis of all observations from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Kepler-78b/ Wed, 30 October 2013 08:00:00 HST A team of astronomers has found the first Earth-sized planet outside the solar system that has a rocky composition like that of Earth. This exoplanet, known as Kepler-78b, orbits its star very closely every 8.5 hours, making it much too hot to support life. The results are being published in the journal Nature. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Herbig/ Thurs, 10 October 2013 09:00:00 HST Dr. George H. Herbig, astronomer emeritus at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, has died at the age of 93. He has been widely acclaimed for his pioneering studies of star formation and the properties and evolution of young stars. His contributions laid the foundation for much of what we know about the birth and early development of stars. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/LonelyPlanet/ Wed, 9 October 2013 09:00:00 HST An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young planet that is not orbiting a star. This free-floating planet, dubbed PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter. The planet formed a mere 12 million years ago—a newborn in planet lifetimes. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/SolarRadioWaves/ Mon, 7 October 2013 09:00:01 HST If your cell phone is dropping calls, the problem may be radio waves from the sun. Our nearest star sometimes unleashes huge eruptions of hot gas, called solar storms, that carry billions of tons of matter in our direction. These storms can be accompanied by solar radio bursts, which can damage many of the technologies that we rely on in our everyday lives. http://www.uhm.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=5893 Thurs, 1 August 2013 00:00:01 HST Brendan Bowler and Andrew Mann are the winners of the 2013 University Research Council student awards for research excellence. Both winners are doctoral students at the Institute for Astronomy (IfA), and each has been awarded a $1,000 prize from the University Research Council and the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai‘i (RCUH). http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/EdLu/ Wed, 17 July 2013 00:00:01 HST Former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, CEO of the B612 Foundation, will give the next Sheraton Waikiki Explorers of the Universe public lecture, “Astronomy Saves the World: Protecting the Planet from Asteroid Impacts,” at 7:30 p.m. on August 15 at the UH Manoa Kennedy Theatre. Tickets are free but required. To obtain them, go to http://uhifa.ticketbud.com. http://www.gemini.edu/node/12025 Thurs, 27 June 2013 00:00:01 HST Results from Gemini Observatory’s recently completed Planet-Finding Campaign show the vast outlying orbital space around many types of stars is largely devoid of gas-giant planets, which apparently tend to dwell close to their parent stars. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/flows/ Wed, 12 June 2013 00:00:01 HST An international team of researchers has mapped the motions of structures of the nearby universe in greater detail than ever before. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/MartianClay/ Mon, 10 June 2013 00:00:01 HST UH researchers \have discovered high concentrations of boron, which may have played a key role in the formation of RNA, in a Martian meteorite. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/blackholes2013/ Wed, 5 June 2013 00:00:01 HST By comparing infrared and X-ray background signals across the same stretch of sky, astronomers have discovered evidence of a significant number of black holes that accompanied the first stars in the universe. http://www.gemini.edu/node/12006 Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:01 HST Thanks to an anonymous $3M gift made through the University of Hawaii Foundation, Pan-STARRS will survive the cuts and continue astronomy research of global import. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Pan-STARRS_Donation/ Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:01 HST A new series of images from Gemini Observatory shows Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) racing toward an uncomfortably close rendezvous with the Sun. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/LMC_distance/ Wed, 6 Mar 2013 00:00:01 HST Astronomers have measured the distance to our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, more accurately than ever before.