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SPECULOOS Project Makes Its First Observations
The SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) has been successfully installed at the Paranal Observatory and has obtained its first engineering and calibration images — a process known as first light. After finishing this commissioning phase, this new array of planet-hunting telescopes will begin scientific operations, starting in earnest in January 2019.
SSO is the core facility of a new exoplanet-hunting project called Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars (SPECULOOS), and consists of four telescopes equipped with 1-metre primary mirrors. The telescopes — named Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto after the four Galilean moons of Jupiter — will enjoy pristine observing conditions at the Paranal site, which is also home to ESO's flagship Very Large Telescope (VLT). Paranal provides a near-perfect site for astronomy, with dark skies and a stable, arid climate.
These telescopes have a momentous task — SPECULOOS aims to search for potentially habitable Earth-sized planets surrounding ultra-cool stars or brown dwarfs, whose planetary populations are still mostly unexplored. Only a few exoplanets have been found orbiting such stars, and even fewer lie within their parent star's habitable zone. Even though these dim stars are hard to observe, they are abundant — comprising about 15% of the stars in the nearby universe. SPECULOOS is designed to explore 1000 such stars, including the nearest, brightest, and smallest, in search of Earth-sized habitable planets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:26AM (8 children)
Have these "scientists" considered the possibility that if we find aliens, they'll trace the beams back to earth and then wipe everyone out (no exceptions) with a nasty brain-melting ray?
(Score: 1) by NateMich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:46AM (1 child)
No, because everything you think you know about space that you learned from science fiction, isn't relevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:55AM
That's what they said about HAL, and now we have Facebook.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:54AM
> a nasty brain-melting ray?
Look around. We're obviously working hard to counter the threat by making as little use of our brains as possible.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:54AM (1 child)
The photons are coming. You can either check them out or ignore them at your own peril.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:18AM
But what if it's like 'male gaze' - committing an assault by having your photoreceptors accept photons that were fired at you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:22AM
then wipe everyone out (no exceptions) with a nasty brain-melting ray?
Well, as long as they don't come down and kick us in the balls first, I guess I can accept that.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:29AM (1 child)
I'm pretty sure I know the narrator to the orbiting brain laser animation, but I stopped looking through the hits upon stumbling across:
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:53AM
Not a good link for you to find. I wonder how much progress has been made in 20 years.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:33AM (4 children)
I love that speculoos spread. Basically crushed up versions of the biscuits mixed with butter to turn it into a paste like peanut butter.
I wonder if they have huge amounts of the that stuff in jars in the observatory kitchen?
Serious question. So serious that I choose to post as an AC.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:00AM
https://www.speculoos.uliege.be/cms/c_4549250/en/speculnew-team [uliege.be]
You can email them.
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(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:27AM (1 child)
... said the 200 inch night assistant - big scopes are _always_ moved around by trained night assistants, never the researchers.
"... that was canned before Christ."
I'd puzzled over that same can of chili myself. Just the regulation fifteen-ounce can, with each end bulging out a good quarter inch.
Mmm-mmm good!
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:27PM
Do you mean the chili was canned prior to canning Christ, or was the chili canned in Christ's presence?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 11 2018, @04:27PM
I can't get speculaas (biscuits or spread) here - but I can get stroopwafels. I'm out right now, but think I might just head to the supermarket for a restock...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:25AM (1 child)
I _think_ it was the hundred inch, but possibly the Palomar two hundred inch.
Scopes that big don't need eyepieces to view planets, the passage I read said that the image of Jupiter was I think four inches across. You can just stand on a latter - or in the case of the Palomar scope, sit in the Prime Focus cage - then look at the focal plane.
But there were eight distinctly different images of Jupiter. That led to momentary panic.
The solution was to air condition the closed observatory dome during the day so as to be the same temperature as was predicted for each night at the time the slit was opened.
I think the hundred was plate glass - window glass. The Mt. Wilson Sixty was recycled wine bottles! But the Palomar scope of Corning Pyrex. Despite all manner of engineering going into the development of Pyrex, the mirror blank's annealing furnace, it's honeycombed rear side and the "floatation" mechanism on which all large mirrors rest, for mirrors that thick there is still quite significant optical degradation if the entire thickness of the mirror has a significant temperature differential.
Modern mirrors mostly use Cer-Vit - "Vitrified Ceramic". I don't know much about Cer-Vit other than that it is transparent, and that it's orange.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:30PM
> But the Palomar scope of Corning Pyrex...
The first attempt is housed at the Corning Museum of Glass [cmog.org].