Long Exposure From Space!

Observatory: Spektr-R & RadioASTRON

Spectr-R is an orbiting 10m radio telescope , the largest when launched 0631hrs 18 July 2011 from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Once in space, the flower-like main dish opened its 27 'petals' successfully within 30 minutes. Spectr-R has a highly elliptical orbit around earth.

Spectr-R is operated as part of RadioAstron, an international space VLBI project led by the Astro Space Center of Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, Russia. 


The telescope is capable of ultra-high resolution. The very high angular resolving power is achieved when used in conjunction with a ground-based system of radio-telescopes as part of RadioASTRON, operating at wavelengths of 1.35–6.0, 18.0 and 92.0 cm.

With its Earth-based components, it forms a network providing detailed images of the universe at 1,000 times the resolution attainable using the Hubble telescope.







News: 

RadioASTRON Testing Complete 26 June

Links:
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spektr_r_mission.html
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spektr_r.html
http://www.itu.int/ITU-R/space/snl/bresult/radvance.asp?sel_satname=SPECTR-R

Observatory: The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimtre Array (ALMA) & Atacama Compact Array (ACA)

ALMA (including ACA) is currently humankind's largest astronomical project. It's currently under construction 5,000 m up on the Chajnantor plateau in Peru's Atacama Desert.

Due for completion next year, at least fifty 12-m dishes and at least one 65m dish, enhanced by a compact array of 4 x 12-m and 12 x 7-m receivers will work in concert to further extend science's vision in the 0.3mm up to 9.6mm bandwidth range.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is a partnership of the EU, North America (USA & Canada) and East Asia (Japan & Taiwan) in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.

News: 
ALMA snaps Centaurus A 25 June 2011


Sites:

AMLAobservatory.org  << Brilliant website

ESO ALMA

ESO ALMA - Public info


NRAO ALMA

NAOJ - ALMA


BBC reports first data collection

Youtuber NikoBustos has made this tribute video:

Observatory: The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) Europe

ASTRON Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy's LOw Frequency ARray is a multi-purpose sensor array. Its main application is astronomy at low frequencies (10-250 MHz).

http://www.lofar.org/

ASTRON NL says: "LOFAR is a powerful next-generation radio telescope for frequencies below 240 MHz that offers revolutionary new observing capabilities thanks to its phased-array technology with digital beam-forming. LOFAR Version 1 already allows novel and cutting-edge science projects, while considerable development is ongoing to reach the full potential of the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT)."

SKA Pushes Computing Hard

Teams from Holland (ASTRON - the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy), Switzerland and IBM have combined to work out how to best deal with a daily data throughput from SKA that will equal over 2x daily world internet usage, or 10-100x the throughput of the large hadron collider at CERN.

It is one of the most data intensive science projects ever planned. "Scientists estimate that the processing power required to operate the telescope will be equal to several millions of today’s fastest computers."

SKA's data backbone will likely be based on an optimization of the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) data system that was made by ASTRON with pathfinder tech specifically meant to assist SKA. Power efficiency and

 Watch this explanation by Dr.ir Albert-Jan Boonstra, Dr Ton Engbersen, and Dr. Martin Schmatz, and read the IBM news release

See: LOFAR

Observatories: The Square Kilometre Array (SKA)

It's radio astronomy, so bigger receivers are better. That's also why the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array ALMA is being built right now eta: next year.

SKA: 

• The SKA Organisation is a non-profit body.
• It has nine funding member countries, Australia, Canada, China, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and the UK, and India is an associate member.
• ETA: 2024, construction starts 2016.
• The HQ is being built in Manchester, UK. 
• Receivers are in South Africa, Australia & New Zealand so the center of the galaxy can be scanned.
• 70 MHz -30GHzrange
• 50 to 100x the resolution
• It will stretch across 5,000km and consist of 3,000 high frequency dishes, 40 million mid-frequency antennas and 2.5 million low-frequency antennas.
• 10,000x quicker scanning

Observatories: The Submillimetre Array (SMA) at Mauna Kea, Hawaii

Sub-millimeter. Blue steel reflectors. But no, its not the 1st of April and this is not about the Derek Zoolander Center For Astrophysicists Who Wanna See Good And Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too.

Photo by mutrock on Flickr. Visit the SMA image gallery

The SMA is actually a real-person-sized array of specialized radio receivers, 4080 m up a dormant volcano in Hawaii. It is run jointly by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics.  

Plasma - Bigger than the Beatles.

Mobile charges! The latest craze in scientific research! For good reason.

Plasma is mobile charges and how they animate the physical world and self-organize the universe, well,  at least 99.999+% of it.

Electric universe theory was a hot topic for decades in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But plasma wasn't even discovered until the early 1930s. Since then other perspectives somehow "won out" and a lot of valid observational science was simply left aside, for the time being.