News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is back to science operations as of Thursday (Feb. 17), following a glitch more than a month ago. The nearly 18-year-old telescope suffered a failure with one of its reaction wheels on Jan. 18, forcing a temporary pivot to safe mode. Swift uses a total of six reaction wheels to … Read more
A prolific NASA space telescope has closed its camera eye for now due to a power issue that has stalled the observatory’s science work. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has studied the X-ray universe since 1999, suffered a power supply problem with its High Resolution Camera instrument on Feb. 9, leading the mission team to … Read more
The hottest commodity in astronomy these days is time — specifically, time using NASA’s brand-new, ultra-powerful observatory. The James Webb Space Telescope, also known as JWST or Webb, launched on Dec. 25, 2021, and is scheduled to begin science observations by this summer. Astronomers eagerly await that moment: Scientists believe that the telescope’s sensitivity and … Read more
Star light, star bright, the James Webb Space Telescope has seen its first star (though it wasn’t quite tonight) – and even taken a selfie, NASA announced Friday. The steps are part of the months-long process of aligning the observatory’s enormous golden mirror that astronomers hope will begin unraveling the mysteries of the early Universe … Read more
It’s been more than a year since scientists lost one of the most iconic telescopes ever built — and yet the collapse of the famed Arecibo Observatory remains something of a mystery. Nestled into the jungle of Puerto Rico, the Arecibo Observatory‘s jewel was its vast radio dish, spanning 1,000 feet (305 meters) across and … Read more
A visualization of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. (Image credit: NASA) NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has temporarily stopped its science observations while the mission team investigates an issue. On Tuesday night (Jan. 18), the observatory, a gamma-ray hunting space telescope originally called the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer, went into safe mode and paused all … Read more
Located in the Okanagan Valley outside of Penticton, British Columbia, there is a massive radio observatory dedicated to observing cosmic radio phenomena. It’s called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a cylindrical parabolic radio telescope that looks like what snowboarders would call a “half-pipe”. This array is part of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory … Read more
After several tense days of unfurling and clicking its various parts into place, the biggest and most sophisticated space telescope ever launched is now complete. On 8 January, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope slowly swung the last 3 of its 18 hexagonal mirror segments into position, locking them together into one 6.5-metre-wide, gold-coated cosmic eye. … Read more
Work for the James Webb Space Telescope is just beginning. On Saturday (Jan. 8), the new observatory, the largest space telescope ever built, successfully unfolded its final primary mirror segment to cap what NASA has billed as one of its most complicated deployments in space ever. The Webb mission team is now turning its attention … Read more
From a Christmas Day launch through working through Eastern Orthodox holidays, the multicultural James Webb Space Telescope team had much to celebrate this holiday season after two weeks working to get the complex telescope deployed. Webb at last unfurled its giant mirror Saturday (Jan. 8), marking the end of likely the most complicated telescope deployment … Read more