All articles tagged with #noirlab
A meteor blaze lit up the night above Arizona’s Kitt Peak National Observatory, captured by Petr Horálek, NOIRLab Audiovisual Ambassador. The image frames the WIYN telescope domes and nearby constellations (Orion and Canis Major), illustrating how rare and difficult it is to photograph a meteor in motion and highlighting the observatory’s place on Tohono O’odham Nation land as part of NOIRLab.
Astronomers using the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera in Chile captured a vast, diffuse halo around the Sombrero Galaxy (M104), extending far beyond its dusty disk and revealing a faint stellar stream that suggests past interactions with a smaller satellite galaxy. The image showcases both the bright central bulge and the faint outer structures in one frame, thanks to the camera’s sensitivity to extremely faint light.
A new 570-megapixel image from the Dark Energy Camera at Cerro Tololo reveals an enormous, diffuse halo around the Sombrero Galaxy (M104) that extends beyond the bright disk by more than three times, plus a faint stellar stream suggesting past interactions with a smaller satellite. The image also sharpens the central bulge and dust lanes, highlighting star formation regions and the galaxy’s distinctive hat-like shape, thanks to NOIRLab’s deep-sky imaging capabilities, building on recent JWST mid-infrared observations.
Space.com spotlights Messier 104, the Sombrero Galaxy, a spiral galaxy about 28 million light-years away in Virgo whose distinctive wide, hat-like disk earns it its nickname. The image was captured with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo, part of NOIRLab, and the galaxy hosts roughly 2,000 globular clusters. It’s too faint to see with the naked eye, though binoculars or a small telescope reveal its silhouette. This piece marks Space photo of the day for April 29, 2026.
A ground-based image of the Small Magellanic Cloud captured from Cerro Pachón, Chile by Petr Horálek using a standard camera with a wide-aperture telephoto lens over four hours shows telescope-like detail, including intricate star fields and dust structures, underscoring how optimal conditions can make Earth-based imaging competitive with space telescopes and highlighting NOIRLab’s outreach through public-facing astrophotography.
A ground-based image taken from Cerro Pachón, Chile, captures the Small Magellanic Cloud—a dwarf galaxy containing hundreds of millions of stars about 200,000 light-years from Earth—with a wide-aperture telephoto lens in a four‑hour exposure; the result, taken by NOIRLab ambassador Petr Horálek, looks like a image from a space telescope but was photographed on the ground, highlighting the SMC’s visibility to the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere.
The NSF’s 570‑megapixel Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco 4‑meter telescope in Chile captured an ultra‑high‑resolution image of Messier 104 (the Sombrero Galaxy), detailing its dusty disk, extensive halo, thousands of globular clusters, and a tidal stellar stream that hints at a past merger, enabling deeper study of its structure and star formation.
A newly released image from NSF's NOIRLab captures Messier 104, the Sombrero galaxy, in an edge-on view that highlights its bright central bulge and dusty disk, illustrating the galaxy's distinctive silhouette about 28 million light-years from Earth.
Un esfuerzo internacional reporta la medición directa más precisa de la tasa de expansión local: la constante de Hubble es 73.50 ± 0.81 km/s/Mpc (~1%), resultado de la red de distancias locales (H0DN) que combina diversas técnicas y datos de NOIRLab (CTIO y KPNO). Este hallazgo refuerza la tensión con las predicciones del Universo temprano, lo que podría indicar nueva física más allá del modelo cosmológico estándar.
Discovered in May 2025 by ATLAS, Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) was photographed by the Gemini North telescope breaking apart as it emerged from behind the Sun in Oct 2025. By early November its nucleus had fragmented into at least three pieces, a fate not uncommon for sun‑baked comets. The event, part of Live Science’s Space Photo of the Week coverage, underscores the volatile survival of comets near perihelion and foreshadows another sungrazer, 3I/ATLAS MAPS, potentially facing a similar solar encounter.
A Space.com photo of the day features a panoramic view of the Milky Way above the Gemini South Observatory in Chile. The image highlights Gemini South's role in the International Gemini Observatory, its adaptive-optics-assisted infrared imaging, and NOIRLab's effort to power remote observatories with solar energy.
A recently discovered interstellar comet, 3I-Atlas, is becoming more active as it approaches the sun, developing a larger tail, and is on a trajectory to pass near Earth between October and December, with the closest approach at 167 million miles away.
The International Gemini Observatory, a key player in global astronomical research, has temporarily suspended operations following a cyberattack. The Gemini North and South Telescopes, along with the Gemini.edu website, have been taken offline as a precaution. The National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab), backed by the National Science Foundation, is working to restore normal operations and investigate the cyberattack. The culprits and their motives remain unknown, but previous cyberattacks on astronomical observatories and NASA have highlighted the need for enhanced cybersecurity in the space sector.
Hackers have targeted two of the world's most advanced telescopes, the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii and Gemini South Telescope in Chile, along with other telescopes on Cerro Tololo in Chile, causing temporary shutdowns. The National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) is working with cybersecurity experts to investigate the cyberattacks and restore operations. The nature and origin of the attacks remain unclear. The incident occurred shortly before the United States National Counterintelligence and Security Center issued a bulletin warning about the threat of cyberattacks and espionage targeting American space companies and research organizations. This is not the first time astronomical observatories have been targeted, with previous attacks on the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA.
A major cyberattack has disrupted remote connections to ten National Science Foundation (NSF) space telescopes, causing chaos in the astronomy community. The shutdowns have lasted for over two weeks, leading to missed opportunities for space observations. The reason behind the cyberattack remains unknown, and investigations are ongoing to resolve the incident.