1.
European Space Agency
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The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organisation of 22 member states, dedicated to the exploration of space. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, France, ESA has a staff of about 2,000. The main European launch vehicle Ariane 5 is operated through Arianespace with ESA sharing in the costs of launching, after World War II, many European scientists left Western Europe in order to work with the United States. The meeting was attended by representatives from eight countries, including Harrie Massey. The Western European nations decided to have two different agencies, one concerned with developing a system, ELDO, and the precursor of the European Space Agency. The latter was established on 20 March 1964 by an agreement signed on 14 June 1962, from 1968 to 1972, ESRO launched seven research satellites. ESA in its current form was founded with the ESA Convention in 1975, ESA has 10 founding member states, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. These signed the ESA Convention in 1975 and deposited the instruments of ratification by 1980, during this interval the agency functioned in a de facto fashion. ESA launched its first major scientific mission in 1975, Cos-B, ESA joined NASA in the IUE, the worlds first high-orbit telescope, which was launched in 1978 and operated very successfully for 18 years. A number of successful Earth-orbit projects followed, and in 1986 ESA began Giotto, its first deep-space mission, to study the comets Halley and Grigg–Skjellerup. Hipparcos, a mission, was launched in 1989 and in the 1990s SOHO, Ulysses. Recent scientific missions in co-operation with NASA include the Cassini–Huygens space probe, as the successor of ELDO, ESA has also constructed rockets for scientific and commercial payloads. Ariane 1, launched in 1979, brought mostly commercial payloads into orbit from 1984 onward, the successor launch vehicle of Ariane 5, the Ariane 6 is already in the definition stage and is envisioned to enter service in the 2020s. The beginning of the new millennium saw ESA become, along with agencies like NASA, JAXA, ISRO, CSA and Roscosmos, one of the major participants in scientific space research. Although ESA had relied on co-operation with NASA in previous decades, especially the 1990s, changed circumstances led to decisions to rely more on itself, a 2011 press issue thus stated, Russia is ESAs first partner in its efforts to ensure long-term access to space. ESA maintains its scientific and research projects mainly for astronomy-space missions such as Corot, launched on 27 December 2006 and this is the reason space exploration is an integral part of overall space activities. It has always been so, and it will be more important in the future. ESA describes its work in two overlapping ways, For the general public the various fields of work are described as Activities, Member states participate to varying degrees in the mandatory and optional space programmes
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Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
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Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
4.
Chile
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Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a South American country occupying a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas, and Easter Island in Oceania. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres of Antarctica, the arid Atacama Desert in northern Chile contains great mineral wealth, principally copper. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands, and features a string of volcanoes and lakes, the southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands. Spain conquered and colonized Chile in the century, replacing Inca rule in northern and central Chile. After declaring its independence from Spain in 1818, Chile emerged in the 1830s as a relatively stable authoritarian republic, in the 1960s and 1970s the country experienced severe left-right political polarization and turmoil. The regime, headed by Augusto Pinochet, ended in 1990 after it lost a referendum in 1988 and was succeeded by a coalition which ruled through four presidencies until 2010. Chile is today one of South Americas most stable and prosperous nations and it leads Latin American nations in rankings of human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, state of peace, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption. It also ranks high regionally in sustainability of the state, Chile is a founding member of the United Nations, the Union of South American Nations and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. There are various theories about the origin of the word Chile, another theory points to the similarity of the valley of the Aconcagua with that of the Casma Valley in Peru, where there was a town and valley named Chili. Another origin attributed to chilli is the onomatopoeic cheele-cheele—the Mapuche imitation of the warble of a locally known as trile. The Spanish conquistadors heard about this name from the Incas, ultimately, Almagro is credited with the universalization of the name Chile, after naming the Mapocho valley as such. The older spelling Chili was in use in English until at least 1900 before switching over to Chile, stone tool evidence indicates humans sporadically frequented the Monte Verde valley area as long as 18,500 years ago. About 10,000 years ago, migrating Native Americans settled in fertile valleys, settlement sites from very early human habitation include Monte Verde, Cueva del Milodon and the Pali Aike Craters lava tube. They fought against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his army, the result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river. The next Europeans to reach Chile were Diego de Almagro and his band of Spanish conquistadors, the Spanish encountered various cultures that supported themselves principally through slash-and-burn agriculture and hunting. The conquest of Chile began in earnest in 1540 and was carried out by Pedro de Valdivia, one of Francisco Pizarros lieutenants, who founded the city of Santiago on 12 February 1541. Although the Spanish did not find the gold and silver they sought, they recognized the agricultural potential of Chiles central valley
5.
Telescope
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A telescope is an optical instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation. The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s and they found use in both terrestrial applications and astronomy. Within a few decades, the telescope was invented, which used mirrors to collect. In the 20th century many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s, the word telescope now refers to a wide range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors. The word telescope was coined in 1611 by the Greek mathematician Giovanni Demisiani for one of Galileo Galileis instruments presented at a banquet at the Accademia dei Lincei, in the Starry Messenger, Galileo had used the term perspicillum. The earliest recorded working telescopes were the telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in 1608. Their development is credited to three individuals, Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, who were spectacle makers in Middelburg, Galileo heard about the Dutch telescope in June 1609, built his own within a month, and improved upon the design in the following year. Also in 1609, Thomas Harriot became the first person known to point a telescope skyward in order to make observations of a celestial object. The idea that the objective, or light-gathering element, could be a mirror instead of a lens was being investigated soon after the invention of the refracting telescope. The potential advantages of using parabolic mirrors—reduction of spherical aberration and no chromatic aberration—led to many proposed designs, in 1668, Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope, of a design which now bears his name, the Newtonian reflector. The invention of the lens in 1733 partially corrected color aberrations present in the simple lens and enabled the construction of shorter. The largest reflecting telescopes currently have objectives larger than 10 m, the 20th century also saw the development of telescopes that worked in a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays. The first purpose built radio telescope went into operation in 1937, since then, a tremendous variety of complex astronomical instruments have been developed. The name telescope covers a range of instruments. Most detect electromagnetic radiation, but there are differences in how astronomers must go about collecting light in different frequency bands. The near-infrared can be collected much like light, however in the far-infrared and submillimetre range. For example, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope observes from wavelengths from 3 μm to 2000 μm, on the other hand, the Spitzer Space Telescope, observing from about 3 μm to 180 μm uses a mirror. Also using reflecting optics, the Hubble Space Telescope with Wide Field Camera 3 can observe in the range from about 0.2 μm to 1.7 μm
6.
New Technology Telescope
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The New Technology Telescope or NTT is an Alt-Az,3. 58-metre Ritchey–Chrétien telescope part of the European Southern Observatory and began operations in 1989. It is located in Chile at the La Silla Observatory and was a pioneer in the use of active optics. The telescope and its developed an revolutionary design for optimal image quality. The main mirror of NTT is flexible and its shape is adjusted during observations by actuators to preserve the optimal image quality. The secondary mirror position is also controlled in three directions. The design of the octagonal enclosure housing the NTT is another technological breakthrough, the telescope dome is relatively small, and is ventilated by a system of flaps that makes air flow smoothly across the mirror, reducing turbulence and leading to sharper images. Although other pre-existing telescopes such as the Nordic Optical Telescope had lightweight mirrors supported by actuators and its design as well as the design of its enclosure included many revolutionary features, from whence it was named. In particular, great care was taken to ensure a good ventilation of the telescope, since its construction, the NTT has undergone several upgrades which continued to improve its quality. It was used as a real-life test bench for the engineering concepts, the New Technology Telescope initially had the same problem as the Hubble Space Telescope - the mirror was ground to the wrong shape due to a mis-calibrated null corrector. However, the optics system of the NTT was able to correct that error without refiguring the mirror
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Active optics
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Without active optics, the construction of 8 metre class telescopes is not possible, nor would telescopes with segmented mirrors be feasible. Active optics is not to be confused with adaptive optics, which operates at a shorter timescale, most modern telescopes are reflectors, with the primary element being a very large mirror. Historically, primary mirrors were quite thick in order to maintain the correct figure in spite of forces tending to deform it, like wind. This limited their maximum diameter to 5 or 6 metres, such as Palomar Observatorys Hale telescope, a new generation of telescopes built since the 1980s use thin, lighter weight mirrors instead. They are too thin to maintain themselves rigidly in the correct shape, the actuators apply variable forces to the mirror body to keep the reflecting surface in the correct shape over repositioning. The telescope may also be segmented into multiple smaller mirrors, which reduce the sagging due to weight that occurs for large, the combination of actuators, an image quality detector, and a computer to control the actuators to obtain the best possible image, is called active optics. The name active optics means that the system keeps a mirror in its optimal shape against environmental forces such as wind, sag, thermal expansion, Active optics compensate for distorting forces that change relatively slowly, roughly on timescales of seconds. The telescope is therefore actively still, in its optimal shape, Active optics should not be confused with adaptive optics, which operates on a much shorter timescale to compensate for atmospheric effects, rather than for mirror deformation. The influences that active optics compensate are intrinsically slower and have an amplitude in aberration. Adaptive optics on the other hand corrects for atmospheric distortions that affect the image at 100–1000 Hz and these corrections need to be much faster, but also have smaller amplitude. Because of this, adaptive optics uses smaller corrective mirrors and this used to be a separate mirror not integrated in the telescopes light path, but nowadays this can be the second, third or fourth mirror in a telescope. Complicated laser set-ups and interferometers can also be actively stabilized, the system can be sped up or made more noise-immune by using a PID controller. For pulsed lasers the controller should be locked to the repetition rate, a continuous pilot beam can be used to allow for up to 10 kHz bandwidth of stabilization for low repetition rate lasers. Sometimes Fabry–Pérot interferometers have to be adjusted in length to pass a given wavelength, therefore, the reflected light is extracted by means of a Faraday rotator and a polarizer. Long optical cavities are very sensitive to the mirror alignment, a control circuit can be used to peak power. One possibility is to perform small rotations with one end mirror, if this rotation is about the optimum position, no power oscillation occurs. Any beam pointing oscillation can be removed using the steering mechanism mentioned above. X-ray active optics, using actively deformable grazing incidence mirrors, are also being investigated, adaptive optics – faster technology for smaller aberrations
8.
Very Large Telescope
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The Very Large Telescope is a telescope facility operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. The VLT consists of four telescopes, each with a primary mirror 8.2 m across. The four separate optical telescopes are known as Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun, the telescopes form an array which is complemented by four movable Auxiliary Telescopes of 1.8 m aperture. The VLT operates at visible and infrared wavelengths.001 arc-second and this is equivalent to roughly 2 meters resolution at the distance of the Moon. In single telescope mode of operation angular resolution is about 0.05 arc-second, the VLT is the most productive ground-based facility for astronomy, with only the Hubble Space Telescope generating more scientific papers among facilities operating at visible wavelengths. The VLT consists of an arrangement of four large telescopes with optical elements that can combine them into an astronomical interferometer, the interferometer also includes a set of four 1.8 meter diameter movable telescopes dedicated to interferometric observations. The first of the UTs started operating in May 1998 and was offered to the community on 1 April 1999. The other telescopes followed suit in 1999 and 2000, thus making the VLT fully operational, four 1. 8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes have been added to the VLTI to make it available when the UTs are being used for other projects. These ATs were installed between 2004 and 2007, today, all four Unit Telescopes and all four Auxiliary Telescopes are operational. The VLTs 8. 2-meter telescopes were designed to operate in three modes, as a set of four independent telescopes. as a single large coherent interferometric instrument. This mode is used, only for observations of relatively bright sources with small angular extent. As a single large incoherent instrument, for extra light-gathering capacity, the instrumentation required to bring the light to a combined incoherent focus was not built. Recently, new proposals have been put forward for making this observing mode available. Multiple telescopes are sometimes independently pointed at the object, either to increase the total light-gathering power. In particular, the VLT has several adaptive optics systems, which correct for the effects of atmospheric turbulence, providing images almost as sharp as if the telescope were in space. In the near-infrared, the adaptive optics images of the VLT are up to three times sharper than those of the Hubble Space Telescope, and the resolution is many times better than Hubble. The VLTs are noted for their level of observing efficiency. The 8.2 m-diameter telescopes are housed in compact, thermally controlled buildings, the principal role of the main VLT telescopes is to operate as four independent telescopes
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Primary mirror
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A primary mirror is the principal light-gathering surface of a reflecting telescope. The primary mirror of a telescope is a spherical or parabolic shaped disks of polished reflective metal, or in later telescopes. One of the first known reflecting telescopes, Newtons reflector of 1668, the next major change was to use silver on glass rather than metal, in the 19th century such was with the Crossley reflector. This was changed to vacuum deposited aluminum on glass, used on the 200-inch Hale telescope, solid primary mirrors have to sustain their own weight and not deform under gravity, which limits the maximum size for a single piece primary mirror. Segmented mirror configurations are used to get around the limitation on single primary mirrors. For example, the Giant Magellan Telescope will have seven 8.4 meter primary mirrors, with the resolving power equivalent to a 24.5 m optical aperture. The largest optical telescope in the world as of 2009 to use a non-segmented single-mirror as its mirror is the 8. S. /German/Italian Large Binocular Telescope has two 8.4 m mirrors. Both of these are smaller than the 10 m segmented primary mirrors on the two Keck telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope has a 2.4 m primary mirror. Radio and submillimeter telescopes use much larger dishes or antennae, which do not have to be made as precisely as the used in optical telescopes. The Arecibo Observatory uses a 305 m dish, which is the world largest single-dish radio telescope fixed to the ground, the Green Bank Telescope has the worlds largest steerable single radio dish with 100 m in diameter. There are largest radio arrays, composed of multiple dishes which have better image resolution, active optics Honeycomb mirror Liquid mirror List of largest optical reflecting telescopes List of telescope parts and construction Mirror mount Mirror support cell Secondary mirror
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Atacama Large Millimeter Array
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The Atacama Large Millimeter Array is an astronomical interferometer of radio telescopes in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. ALMA is a partnership among Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. Costing about US$1.4 billion, it is the most expensive ground-based telescope in operation, ALMA began scientific observations in the second half of 2011 and the first images were released to the press on 3 October 2011. The array has been operational since March 2013. The initial ALMA array is composed of 66 high-precision antennas, the high sensitivity is mainly achieved through the large numbers of antenna dishes that will make up the array. The telescopes were provided by the European, North American and East Asian partners of ALMA, the American and European partners each provided twenty-five 12-meter diameter antennas, that compose the main array. The participating East Asian countries are contributing 16 antennas in the form of the Atacama Compact Array, by using smaller antennas than the main ALMA array, larger fields of view can be imaged at a given frequency using ACA. Placing the antennas closer together enables the imaging of sources of larger angular extent, the ACA works together with the main array in order to enhance the latters wide-field imaging capability. ALMA has its roots in three astronomical projects — the Millimeter Array of the United States, the Large Southern Array of Europe. The merged array combined the sensitivity of the LSA with the frequency coverage, ESO and NRAO worked together in technical, science, and management groups to define and organize a joint project between the two observatories with participation by Canada and Spain. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on November 6,2003 and the ALMA logo was unveiled and this was mainly for political reasons. Although very different approaches have been chosen by the providers, each of the antenna designs appears to be able to meet ALMAs stringent requirements, ALMA is the largest and most expensive ground-based astronomical project, costing between US$1.4 and 1.5 billion. S. Japanese, and Canadian companies and universities, three prototype antennas have undergone evaluation at the Very Large Array since 2002. The first antenna was delivered in 2008, the last in 2011, the solution chosen is to use two custom 28-wheel self-loading heavy haulers. The vehicles were made by Scheuerle Fahrzeugfabrik in Germany and are 10 m wide,20 m long and 6 m high and they are powered by twin turbocharged 500 kW Diesel engines. The transporters, which feature a drivers seat designed to accommodate an oxygen tank to aid breathing the thin high-altitude air, the first vehicle was completed and tested in July 2007. Both transporters were delivered to the ALMA Operations Support Facility in Chile on 15 February 2008, on 7 July 2008, an ALMA transporter moved an antenna for the first time, from inside the antenna assembly building to a pad outside the building for testing. During Autumn 2009, the first three antennas were transported one-by-one to the Array Operations Site, linking three antennas allows corrections of errors that can arise when only two antennas are used, thus paving the way for precise, high-resolution imaging
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Universe
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The Universe is all of time and space and its contents. It includes planets, moons, minor planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the size of the entire Universe is unknown. The earliest scientific models of the Universe were developed by ancient Greek and Indian philosophers and were geocentric, over the centuries, more precise astronomical observations led Nicolaus Copernicus to develop the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. In developing the law of gravitation, Sir Isaac Newton built upon Copernicuss work as well as observations by Tycho Brahe. Further observational improvements led to the realization that our Solar System is located in the Milky Way galaxy and it is assumed that galaxies are distributed uniformly and the same in all directions, meaning that the Universe has neither an edge nor a center. Discoveries in the early 20th century have suggested that the Universe had a beginning, the majority of mass in the Universe appears to exist in an unknown form called dark matter. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the Universe, under this theory, space and time emerged together 13. 799±0.021 billion years ago with a fixed amount of energy and matter that has become less dense as the Universe has expanded. After the initial expansion, the Universe cooled, allowing the first subatomic particles to form, giant clouds later merged through gravity to form galaxies, stars, and everything else seen today. Some physicists have suggested various multiverse hypotheses, in which the Universe might be one among many universes that likewise exist, the Universe can be defined as everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist. According to our current understanding, the Universe consists of spacetime, forms of energy, the Universe encompasses all of life, all of history, and some philosophers and scientists suggest that it even encompasses ideas such as mathematics and logic. The word universe derives from the Old French word univers, which in turn derives from the Latin word universum, the Latin word was used by Cicero and later Latin authors in many of the same senses as the modern English word is used. Another synonym was ὁ κόσμος ho kósmos, synonyms are also found in Latin authors and survive in modern languages, e. g. the German words Das All, Weltall, and Natur for Universe. The same synonyms are found in English, such as everything, the cosmos, the world, the prevailing model for the evolution of the Universe is the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang model states that the earliest state of the Universe was extremely hot and dense, the model is based on general relativity and on simplifying assumptions such as homogeneity and isotropy of space. The Big Bang model accounts for such as the correlation of distance and redshift of galaxies, the ratio of the number of hydrogen to helium atoms. The initial hot, dense state is called the Planck epoch, after the Planck epoch and inflation came the quark, hadron, and lepton epochs. Together, these epochs encompassed less than 10 seconds of time following the Big Bang, the observed abundance of the elements can be explained by combining the overall expansion of space with nuclear and atomic physics. As the Universe expands, the density of electromagnetic radiation decreases more quickly than does that of matter because the energy of a photon decreases with its wavelength
12.
Terahertz radiation
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Photon energy in THz regime is less than band-gap of nonmetallic materials and thus THz beam can traverse through such materials. The transmitted THz beam is used for material characterization, layer inspection, terahertz radiation falls in between infrared radiation and microwave radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum, and it shares some properties with each of these. Like infrared and microwave radiation, terahertz radiation travels in a line of sight and is non-ionizing, like microwave radiation, terahertz radiation can penetrate a wide variety of non-conducting materials. Terahertz radiation can pass through clothing, paper, cardboard, wood, masonry, plastic, the penetration depth is typically less than that of microwave radiation. Terahertz radiation has limited penetration through fog and clouds and cannot penetrate liquid water or metal, THz is not ionizing yet can penetrate some distance through body tissue, so it is of interest as a replacement for medical X-rays. Due to its wavelength, images made using THz are low resolution. However, at distances of ~10 meters the band may still allow many useful applications in imaging and construction of high bandwidth wireless networking systems, terahertz radiation is emitted as part of the black-body radiation from anything with temperatures greater than about 10 kelvin. The opacity of the Earths atmosphere to submillimeter radiation restricts these observatories to very high altitude sites, and electronic oscillators based on resonant tunneling diodes have been shown to operate up to 700 GHz. There have also been solid-state sources of millimeter and submillimeter waves for many years, AB Millimeter in Paris, for instance, produces a system that covers the entire range from 8 GHz to 1000 GHz with solid state sources and detectors. Nowadays, most time-domain work is done via ultrafast lasers, in mid-2007, scientists at the U. S. The group was led by Ulrich Welp of Argonnes Materials Science Division, the device uses high-temperature superconducting crystals, grown at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. This alternating current induces an electromagnetic field, even a small voltage can induce frequencies in the terahertz range, according to Welp. In 2008, engineers at Harvard University achieved room temperature emission of several hundred nanowatts of coherent terahertz radiation using a semiconductor source, THz radiation was generated by nonlinear mixing of two modes in a mid-infrared quantum cascade laser. Previous sources had required cryogenic cooling, which limited their use in everyday applications. In 2009, it was discovered that the act of unpeeling adhesive tape generates non-polarized terahertz radiation, with a peak at 2 THz. In 2011, Japanese electronic parts maker Rohm and a team at Osaka University produced a chip capable of transmitting 1.5 Gbit/s using terahertz radiation. Such an antenna would broadcast in the frequency range. Unlike X-rays, terahertz radiation is not ionizing radiation and its low photon energies in general do not damage tissues, some frequencies of terahertz radiation can penetrate several millimeters of tissue with low water content and reflect back
13.
Extremely Large Telescope
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The European Extremely Large Telescope is an astronomical observatory and the worlds largest optical/near-infrared extremely large telescope now under construction. Part of the European Southern Observatory, it is located on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, the observatory aims to gather 13 times more light than the largest optical telescopes existing in 2014, and be able to correct for atmospheric distortions. It has around 256 times the light gathering area of the Hubble Space Telescope and, according to the E-ELTs specifications, the facility is expected to take 11 years to construct. Construction work on the E-ELT site started in June 2014, by December 2014, ESO had secured over 90% of the total funding and authorized construction of the telescope to start, which will cost around one billion Euro for the first construction phase. First light is planned for 2024, on 26 April 2010, the European Southern Observatory Council selected Cerro Armazones, Chile, as the baseline site for the planned E-ELT. Other sites that were under discussion included Cerro Macon, Salta, in Argentina, Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, on the Canary Islands, and sites in South Africa, Morocco, and Antarctica. Early designs included a primary mirror with a diameter of 42 metres and area of about 1,300 m2. However, in 2011 a proposal was put forward to reduce its size by 13% to 978 m2, for a 39.3 m diameter primary mirror and a 4.2 m diameter secondary mirror. It reduced projected costs from 1.275 billion to 1.055 billion euros, the ESO Council endorsed the revised baseline design in June 2011 and expected a construction proposal for approval in December 2011. Funding was subsequently included in the 2012 budget for initial work to begin in early 2012, the project received preliminary approval in June 2012. ESO approved the start of construction in December 2014, with over 90% funding of the nominal budget secured, the design phase of the 5-mirror anastigmat was fully funded within the ESO budget. With the 2011 changes in the design, the construction cost was estimated to be €1.055 billion. The start of operations is planned for 2024, the ESO focused on the current design after a feasibility study concluded the proposed 100 metres diameter Overwhelmingly Large Telescope would cost €1.5 billion, and be too complex. Both current fabrication technology and road transportation constraints limit single mirrors to being roughly 8 metres in a single piece, the E-ELT will use a similar design, as well as techniques to work around atmospheric distortion of incoming light, known as adaptive optics. A 40-metre-class mirror will allow the study of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. The E-ELT is the highest priority in the European planning activities for research infrastructures, such as the Astronet Science Vision and Infrastructure Roadmap, the first three mirrors are curved, and form a three mirror anastigmat design for excellent image quality over the 10 arcminute field of view. The fourth and fifth mirrors are flat, and provide adaptive optics correction for atmospheric distortions, the surface of the 39-metre primary mirror will be composed of 798 hexagonal segments. In January 2017, ESO awarded the contract for the fabrication of the 4608 edge sensors to the FAMES consortium and these sensors can measure relative positions to an accuracy of a few nanometres, the most accurate ever used in a telescope
14.
Segmented mirror
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A segmented mirror is an array of smaller mirrors designed to act as segments of a single large curved mirror. The segments can be spherical or asymmetric. They are used as objectives for large reflecting telescopes, to function, all the mirror segments have to be polished to a precise shape and actively aligned by a computer-controlled active optics system using actuators built into the mirror support cell. The concept and necessary technologies were developed under the leadership of Dr. There is a limit for primary mirrors made of a single rigid piece of glass. Such non-segmented, or monolithic mirrors can not be constructed larger than eight meters in diameter. The largest monolithic mirror in use are currently the two primary mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope, each with a diameter of 8.4 meters, the use of segmented mirrors is therefore a key component for large-aperture telescopes. Using a monolithic mirror much larger than 5 meters is prohibitively expensive due to the cost of both the mirror, and the structure needed to support it. A mirror beyond that size would sag slightly under its own weight as the telescope was rotated to different positions. Segments are also easier to fabricate, transport, install, segmented mirrors do have the drawback that each segment may require some precise asymmetrical shape, and rely on a complicated computer-controlled mounting system. All of the segments also cause diffraction effects in the final image, some of the largest optical telescopes in the world use segmented primary mirrors. Both telescopes feature 10 m primary mirrors, Hobby-Eberly Telescope The HET is a 9. 2-meter telescope located at the McDonald Observatory, West Texas at an altitude of 2,026 m. Its primary mirror is constructed from 91 hexagonal segments, the telescopes main mirror is fixed at a 55 degree angle and can rotate around its base. A target is tracked by moving the instruments at the focus of the telescope, this access to about 70–81% of the sky at its location. Southern African Large Telescope The SALT is a 10-meter telescope dedicated on spectroscopy for most of its observing time. It shares similarities with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope and also consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments, each 1 meter across and it is located close to the town of Sutherland in the semi-desert region of the Karoo, South Africa. It is a facility of the South African Astronomical Observatory, the national observatory of South Africa. Gran Telescopio Canarias Also known as the GranTeCan, the Canaries Great Telescope uses a total of 36 segmented mirrors
15.
Supermassive black hole
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In the case of the Milky Way, the SMBH corresponds with the location of Sagittarius A*. Supermassive black holes have properties that distinguish them from lower-mass classifications, first, the average density of a supermassive black hole can be less than the density of water in the case of some supermassive black holes. This is because the Schwarzschild radius is proportional to mass. In addition, the forces in the vicinity of the event horizon are significantly weaker for massive black holes. Unlike with stellar mass black holes, one would not experience significant tidal force until very deep into the black hole, donald Lynden-Bell and Martin Rees hypothesized in 1971 that the center of the Milky Way galaxy would contain a supermassive black hole. Sagittarius A* was discovered and named on February 13 and 15,1974, by astronomers Bruce Balick and they discovered a radio source that emits synchrotron radiation, it was found to be dense and immobile because of its gravitation. This was, therefore, the first indication that a black hole exists in the center of the Milky Way. The origin of black holes remains an open field of research. Astrophysicists agree that once a black hole is in place in the center of a galaxy, it can grow by accretion of matter, there are, however, several hypotheses for the formation mechanisms and initial masses of the progenitors, or seeds, of supermassive black holes. The most obvious hypothesis is that the seeds are black holes of tens or perhaps hundreds of masses that are left behind by the explosions of massive stars. Yet another model involves a dense stellar cluster undergoing core-collapse as the heat capacity of the system drives the velocity dispersion in the core to relativistic speeds. Finally, primordial black holes may have been produced directly from external pressure in the first moments after the Big Bang, formation of black holes from the deaths of the first stars has been extensively studied and corroborated by observations. The other models for black hole formation listed above are theoretical, the difficulty in forming a supermassive black hole resides in the need for enough matter to be in a small enough volume. This matter needs to have very little angular momentum in order for this to happen, normally, the process of accretion involves transporting a large initial endowment of angular momentum outwards, and this appears to be the limiting factor in black hole growth. This is a component of the theory of accretion disks. Gas accretion is the most efficient and also the most conspicuous way in black holes grow. The majority of the growth of supermassive black holes is thought to occur through episodes of rapid gas accretion. Observations reveal that quasars were more frequent when the Universe was younger, indicating that supermassive black holes formed
16.
Dark matter
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Dark matter is an unidentified type of matter distinct from dark energy, baryonic matter, and neutrinos whose existence would explain a number of otherwise puzzling astronomical observations. The name refers to the fact that it does not emit or interact with radiation, such as light. The standard model of cosmology indicates that the total mass–energy of the universe contains 4. 9% ordinary matter,26. 8% dark matter and 68. 3% dark energy. Thus, dark matter constitutes 84. 5% of total mass, the most widely accepted hypothesis on the form for dark matter is that it is composed of weakly interacting massive particles that interact only through gravity and the weak force. All these lines of evidence suggest that galaxies, galaxy clusters, and the universe as a whole contain far more matter than that which is observable via electromagnetic signals. Many experiments to detect proposed dark matter particles through non-gravitational means are under way, however, no dark matter particle has been conclusively identified. ”In 1906 Henri Poincaré in the “The Milky Way and Theory of Gases” used dark matter, ” or “matière obscure” in French in discussing Kelvins work. The first to suggest the existence of matter was Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn in 1922. Fellow Dutchman and radio astronomy pioneer Jan Oort also hypothesized the existence of matter in 1932. In 1933, Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, who studied galactic clusters while working at the California Institute of Technology, Zwicky applied the virial theorem to the Coma galaxy cluster and obtained evidence of unseen mass that he called dunkle Materie dark matter. Zwicky estimated its mass based on the motions of galaxies near its edge and compared that to an estimate based on its brightness and he estimated that the cluster had about 400 times more mass than was visually observable. The gravity effect of the galaxies was far too small for such fast orbits. Based on these conclusions, Zwicky inferred that some unseen matter provided the mass and this was the first formal inference about the existence of dark matter. However, Zwicky did correctly infer that the bulk of the matter was dark, the first robust indications that the mass to light ratio was anything other than unity came from measurements of galaxy rotation curves. In 1939, Horace W. Babcock reported the rotation curve for the Andromeda nebula and he attributed it to either light absorption within the galaxy or modified dynamics in the outer portions of the spiral and not to missing matter. Vera Rubin and Kent Ford in the 1960s–1970s provided further strong evidence, Rubin worked with a new spectrograph to measure the velocity curve of edge-on spiral galaxies with greater accuracy. This result was confirmed in 1978, an influential paper presented Rubins results in 1980. According to consensus among cosmologists, dark matter is composed primarily of a not yet characterized type of subatomic particle, the search for this particle, by a variety of means, is one of the major efforts in particle physics. In cosmology, the CMB is explained as relic radiation which has travelled freely since the era of recombination, the CMB’s anisotropies are explained as the result of small primordial density fluctuations, and subsequent acoustic oscillations in the photon-baryon plasma whose restoring force is gravity
17.
Dark energy
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In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy which is hypothesized to permeate all of space, tending to accelerate the expansion of the universe. Dark energy is the most accepted hypothesis to explain the observations since the 1990s indicating that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Assuming that the model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68. 3% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary matter contribute 26. 8% and 4. 9%, respectively, the density of dark energy is very low, much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it comes to dominate the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space, contributions from scalar fields that are constant in space are usually also included in the cosmological constant. The cosmological constant can be formulated to be equivalent to the zero-point radiation of space i. e. the vacuum energy, scalar fields that change in space can be difficult to distinguish from a cosmological constant because the change may be extremely slow. High-precision measurements of the expansion of the universe are required to understand how the rate changes over time. In general relativity, the evolution of the rate is estimated from the curvature of the universe. Measuring the equation of state for energy is one of the biggest efforts in observational cosmology today. The equilibrium is unstable, if the universe expands slightly, then the expansion releases vacuum energy, likewise, a universe which contracts slightly will continue contracting. These sorts of disturbances are inevitable, due to the distribution of matter throughout the universe. Further, observations made by Edwin Hubble in 1929 showed that the universe appears to be expanding, einstein reportedly referred to his failure to predict the idea of a dynamic universe, in contrast to a static universe, as his greatest blunder. Alan Guth and Alexei Starobinsky proposed in 1980 that a negative pressure field, similar in concept to dark energy, inflation postulates that some repulsive force, qualitatively similar to dark energy, resulted in an enormous and exponential expansion of the universe slightly after the Big Bang. Such expansion is a feature of most current models of the Big Bang. It is unclear what relation, if any, exists between energy and inflation. Even after inflationary models became accepted, the constant was thought to be irrelevant to the current universe. Nearly all inflation models predict that the density of the universe should be very close to the critical density. During the 1980s, most cosmological research focused on models with critical density in matter only, usually 95% cold dark matter, then in 2001, the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey gave strong evidence that the matter density is around 30% of critical
18.
Gamma-ray burst
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In gamma-ray astronomy, Gamma-ray bursts are extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the brightest electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe, Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several hours. After an initial flash of gamma rays, a longer-lived afterglow is usually emitted at longer wavelengths, a subclass of GRBs appear to originate from a different process, the merger of binary neutron stars. The sources of most GRBs are billions of years away from Earth. All observed GRBs have originated from outside the Milky Way galaxy, although a class of phenomena. It has been hypothesized that a gamma-ray burst in the Milky Way, pointing directly towards the Earth, GRBs were first detected in 1967 by the Vela satellites, which had been designed to detect covert nuclear weapons tests. Following their discovery, hundreds of models were proposed to explain these bursts. These discoveries, and subsequent studies of the galaxies and supernovae associated with the bursts, clarified the distance and luminosity of GRBs, definitively placing them in distant galaxies. Gamma-ray bursts were first observed in the late 1960s by the U. S. Vela satellites, the United States suspected that the USSR might attempt to conduct secret nuclear tests after signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. On July 2,1967, at 14,19 UTC, uncertain what had happened but not considering the matter particularly urgent, the team at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, led by Ray Klebesadel, filed the data away for investigation. As additional Vela satellites were launched with better instruments, the Los Alamos team continued to find inexplicable gamma-ray bursts in their data, the discovery was declassified and published in 1973. Most early theories of gamma-ray bursts posited nearby sources within the Milky Way Galaxy, if the sources were from within our own galaxy they would be strongly concentrated in or near the galactic plane. The absence of any pattern in the case of GRBs provided strong evidence that gamma-ray bursts must come from beyond the Milky Way. However, some Milky Way models are consistent with an isotropic distribution. For decades after the discovery of GRBs, astronomers searched for a counterpart at other wavelengths, astronomers considered many distinct classes of objects, including white dwarfs, pulsars, supernovae, globular clusters, quasars, Seyfert galaxies, and BL Lac objects. This suggested an origin of either very faint stars or extremely distant galaxies and this fading emission would be called the afterglow. Early searches for this afterglow were unsuccessful, largely because it is difficult to observe a bursts position at longer wavelengths immediately after the initial burst, the William Herschel Telescope identified a fading optical counterpart 20 hours after the burst. Once the GRB faded, deep imaging was able to identify a faint, distant host galaxy at the location of the GRB as pinpointed by the optical afterglow, because of the very faint luminosity of this galaxy, its exact distance was not measured for several years
19.
Black hole
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A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon, although the event horizon has an enormous effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, no locally detectable features appear to be observed. In many ways a black hole acts like a black body. Moreover, quantum theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation. This temperature is on the order of billionths of a kelvin for black holes of stellar mass, objects whose gravitational fields are too strong for light to escape were first considered in the 18th century by John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace. Black holes were considered a mathematical curiosity, it was during the 1960s that theoretical work showed they were a generic prediction of general relativity. The discovery of neutron stars sparked interest in gravitationally collapsed compact objects as a possible astrophysical reality, black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings, by absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses may form. There is general consensus that supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies, despite its invisible interior, the presence of a black hole can be inferred through its interaction with other matter and with electromagnetic radiation such as visible light. Matter that falls onto a black hole can form an accretion disk heated by friction. If there are other stars orbiting a black hole, their orbits can be used to determine the black holes mass, such observations can be used to exclude possible alternatives such as neutron stars.3 million solar masses. On 15 June 2016, a detection of a gravitational wave event from colliding black holes was announced. The idea of a body so massive that light could not escape was briefly proposed by astronomical pioneer John Michell in a letter published in 1783-4. Michell correctly noted that such supermassive but non-radiating bodies might be detectable through their effects on nearby visible bodies. In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, only a few months later, Karl Schwarzschild found a solution to the Einstein field equations, which describes the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass. A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the solution for the point mass. This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, the nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time
20.
Milky Way
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The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. The descriptive milky is derived from the appearance from Earth of the galaxy – a band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. The term Milky Way is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610, until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies, the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 100,000 light-years and 180,000 light-years. The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars, there are probably at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way. The Solar System is located within the disk, about 26,000 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the edge of one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas. The stars in the inner ≈10,000 light-years form a bulge, the very center is marked by an intense radio source, named Sagittarius A*, which is likely to be a supermassive black hole. Stars and gases at a range of distances from the Galactic Center orbit at approximately 220 kilometers per second. The constant rotation speed contradicts the laws of Keplerian dynamics and suggests much of the mass of the Milky Way does not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation. This mass has been termed dark matter, the rotational period is about 240 million years at the position of the Sun. The Milky Way as a whole is moving at a velocity of approximately 600 km per second with respect to frames of reference. The oldest stars in the Milky Way are nearly as old as the Universe itself, the Milky Way has several satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which is a component of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster. The Milky Way can be seen as a band of white light some 30 degrees wide arcing across the sky. Dark regions within the band, such as the Great Rift, the area of the sky obscured by the Milky Way is called the Zone of Avoidance. The Milky Way has a low surface brightness. Its visibility can be reduced by background light such as light pollution or stray light from the Moon. The sky needs to be darker than about 20.2 magnitude per square arcsecond in order for the Milky Way to be seen and it should be visible when the limiting magnitude is approximately +5.1 or better and shows a great deal of detail at +6.1
21.
Exoplanet
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An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun. The first scientific detection of an exoplanet was in 1988, HARPS has discovered about a hundred exoplanets while the Kepler space telescope has found more than two thousand. Kepler has also detected a few thousand candidate planets, of which about 11% may be false positives, on average, there is at least one planet per star, with a percentage having multiple planets. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone, the least massive planet known is Draugr, which is about twice the mass of the Moon. There are planets that are so near to their star that they take only a few hours to orbit, some are so far out that it is difficult to tell whether they are gravitationally bound to the star. Almost all of the planets detected so far are within the Milky Way, the nearest exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, located 4.2 light-years from Earth and orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. The discovery of exoplanets has intensified interest in the search for extraterrestrial life, there is special interest in planets that orbit in a stars habitable zone, where it is possible for liquid water, a prerequisite for life on Earth, to exist on the surface. The study of planetary habitability also considers a range of other factors in determining the suitability of a planet for hosting life. The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the billions, the convention for designating exoplanets is an extension of the system used for designating multiple-star systems as adopted by the International Astronomical Union. For exoplanets orbiting a star, the designation is normally formed by taking the name or, more commonly, designation of its parent star. The first planet discovered in a system is given the designation b, if several planets in the same system are discovered at the same time, the closest one to the star gets the next letter, followed by the other planets in order of orbital size. A provisional IAU-sanctioned standard exists to accommodate the designation of circumbinary planets, a limited number of exoplanets have IAU-sanctioned proper names. Various detection claims made in the century were rejected by astronomers. The first scientific detection of an exoplanet began in 1988, However, the first confirmed detection came in 1992, with the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. The first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a star was made in 1995. Some exoplanets have been imaged directly by telescopes, but the vast majority have been detected through indirect methods, such as the transit method, in the eighteenth century the same possibility was mentioned by Isaac Newton in the General Scholium that concludes his Principia. Claims of exoplanet detections have been made since the nineteenth century, some of the earliest involve the binary star 70 Ophiuchi. In 1855 William Stephen Jacob at the East India Companys Madras Observatory reported that orbital anomalies made it highly probable that there was a body in this system
22.
2M1207b
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2M1207b is a planetary-mass object orbiting the brown dwarf 2M1207, in the constellation Centaurus, approximately 170 light-years from Earth. It is one of the first candidate exoplanets to be directly observed and it was discovered in April 2004 by the Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile by a team from the European Southern Observatory led by Gaël Chauvin. It is believed to be from 3 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, the object is a very hot gas giant, the estimated surface temperature is roughly 1600 K, mostly due to gravitational contraction. Its mass is well below the limit for deuterium fusion in brown dwarfs. The projected distance between 2M1207b and its primary is around 40 AU and its infrared spectrum indicates the presence of water molecules in its atmosphere. The object is not a candidate to support life, either on its surface or on any satellites. 2M1207b is around 100 times fainter in the sky than its companion and it was first spotted as a faint reddish speck of light in 2004 by the VLT. An initial photometric estimate for the distance to 2M1207b was 70 parsecs, in December 2005, American astronomer Eric Mamajek reported a more accurate distance to 2M1207b using the moving-cluster method. Recent trigonometric parallax results have confirmed this moving-cluster distance, leading to an estimate of 52. 75+1.04 −1.00 parsecs or 172 ±3 light years. Estimates for the mass, size, and temperature of 2M1207b are still uncertain, because of this, lower estimates for the mass and temperature have been proposed. Alternatively, 2M1207b might be dimmed by a disk of dust. As an unlikely possibility, Mamajek and Michael Meyer have suggested that the planet is much smaller. Some definitions of the term planet require a planet to have formed in the way as the planets in the Solar System did. With such a definition, if 2M1207b formed by gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula. A similar debate regarding the identity of GQ Lupi b. As of 2006, the International Astronomical Union Working Group on Extrasolar Planets described 2M1207b as a possible planetary-mass companion to a brown dwarf, a Giant Planet Candidate Near a Young Brown Dwarf from the European Southern Observatory
23.
Brown dwarf
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Below this range are the sub-brown dwarfs, and above it are the lightest red dwarfs. Brown dwarfs may be fully convective, with no layers or chemical differentiation by depth, unlike the stars in the main-sequence, brown dwarfs are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen to helium in their cores. They are, however, thought to fuse deuterium and to fuse lithium if their mass is above a threshold of 13 MJ and 65 MJ. It is also debated whether brown dwarfs would be defined by their formation processes rather than by their supposed nuclear fusion reactions. Stars are categorized by spectral class, with brown dwarfs designated as types M, L, T, despite their name, brown dwarfs are of different colors. Many brown dwarfs would likely appear magenta to the human eye, Brown dwarfs are not very luminous at visible wavelengths. Planets are known to orbit some brown dwarfs, 2M1207b, MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, at a distance of about 6.5 light years, the nearest known brown dwarf is Luhman 16, a binary system of brown dwarfs discovered in 2013. DENIS-P J082303. 1-491201 b is listed as the known exoplanet in NASAs exoplanet archive. However, a) the term black dwarf was already in use to refer to a white dwarf, b) red dwarfs fuse hydrogen. Because of this, alternate names for these objects were proposed, in 1975, Jill Tarter suggested the term brown dwarf, using brown as an approximate color. The term black dwarf still refers to a dwarf that has cooled to the point that it no longer emits significant light. The first self-consistent calculation of the minimum mass confirmed a value between 0.08 and 0.07 solar masses for population I objects. The discovery of deuterium burning down to 0.012 solar masses, however, such objects were hard to find as they emit almost no visible light. Their strongest emissions are in the spectrum, and ground-based IR detectors were too imprecise at that time to readily identify any brown dwarfs. Since then, numerous searches by various methods have sought these objects, for many years, efforts to discover brown dwarfs were fruitless. In 1988, however, a faint companion to a known as GD165 was found in an infrared search of white dwarfs. The spectrum of the companion GD 165B was very red and enigmatic and it became clear that GD 165B would need to be classified as a much cooler object than the latest M dwarfs then known. GD 165B remained unique for almost a decade until the advent of the Two Micron All Sky Survey which discovered many objects with similar colors, today, GD 165B is recognized as the prototype of a class of objects now called L dwarfs
24.
High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher
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The High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher is a high-precision echelle planet finding spectrograph installed in 2002 on the ESOs 3. 6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The first light was achieved in February 2003, HARPS has discovered over 130 exoplanets to date, with the first one in 2004, making it the most successful planet finder behind the Kepler space observatory. It is a second-generation radial-velocity spectrograph, based on experience with the ELODIE and CORALIE instruments. HARPS can attain a precision of 0.97 m/s, with a precision of the order of 30 cm s−1. The precision and sensitivity of the instrument is such that it produced the best available measurement of the thorium spectrum. Planet-detection is in some limited by the seismic pulsations of the star observed rather than by limitations of the instrument. It was initially used for a survey of a thousand stars, since October 2012 the HARPS spectrograph has the precision to detect a new category of planets, Habitable super-Earths. This sensitivity was expected from simulations of stellar intrinsic signals, currently, HARPS can detect habitable super-Earth only around low-mass stars as these are more affected by gravitational tug from planets and have habitable zones close to the host star. This is not a complete list, similar instruments, HARPS-N is a copy of this instrument installed in the northern hemisphere in 2012. ELODIE spectrograph is the precursor instrument, anglo-Australian Planet Search or AAPS is another southern hemisphere planet search program. ESPRESSO is a spectrograph for ESOs VLT. The Exoplanet Hunter HARPS, unequalled accuracy and perspectives towards 1cm/s precision, new Planet-Hunting Technology Accelerates Discovery of Exo-Planets & Solar Systems. Archived from the original on 22 April 2007
25.
Gliese 581c
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Gliese 581c /ˈɡliːzə/ or Gl 581c is a planet orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 581. It is the planet discovered in the system and the third in order from the star. With a mass at least 5.5 times that of the Earth, however, further research casts doubt upon the planets habitability. It is tidally locked so if life had a chance to emerge, in astronomical terms, the Gliese 581 system is relatively close to Earth, at 20.37 light-years in the direction of the constellation of Libra. This distance, along with the declination and right ascension coordinates, the team released a paper of their findings dated April 27,2007, published in the July 2007 journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.9 Earth masses, was announced. In the paper, they announced the discovery of another planet in the system, Gliese 581d, with a minimum mass of 7.7 Earth masses. The existence of Gliese 581c and its mass have been measured by the radial velocity method of detecting extrasolar planets, the mass of a planet is calculated by the small periodic movements around a common centre of mass between the host star Gliese 581 and its planets. When all six planets are fitted with a Keplerian solution, the mass of the planet is determined to be 5.5 Earth masses. The radial velocity method cannot by itself determine the true mass, for Gliese 581c, the upper bound is 10.4 Earth masses. Since Gliese 581c has not been detected directly, there are no measurements of its radius. Furthermore, the radial velocity method used to detect it only puts a limit on the planets mass. However, assuming a random orientation of the orbit, the true mass is likely to be close to the measured minimum mass. Assuming that the mass is the minimum mass, the radius may be calculated using various models. For example, if Gliese 581c is a planet with a large iron core, it should have a radius approximately 50% larger than that of Earth. Gravity on such a surface would be approximately 2.24 times as strong as on Earth. Gravity on the surface of such an icy and/or watery planet would be at least 1.25 times as strong as on Earth and they claim the real value of the radius may be anything between the two extremes calculated by density models outlined above. Sara Seager at MIT has speculated that Gliese 581c and other planets could be. Gas dwarfs mostly of helium and hydrogen, carbon-rich diamond worlds purely hot ice VII worlds
26.
Solar System
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The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets, of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury. The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the mass is in the Sun. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being composed of rock. The four outer planets are giant planets, being more massive than the terrestrials. All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a flat disc called the ecliptic. The Solar System also contains smaller objects, the asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. Beyond Neptunes orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, which are populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, within these populations are several dozen to possibly tens of thousands of objects large enough that they have been rounded by their own gravity. Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets, identified dwarf planets include the asteroid Ceres and the trans-Neptunian objects Pluto and Eris. In addition to two regions, various other small-body populations, including comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust clouds. Six of the planets, at least four of the dwarf planets, each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other small objects. The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, the heliopause is the point at which pressure from the solar wind is equal to the opposing pressure of the interstellar medium, it extends out to the edge of the scattered disc. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, the Solar System is located in the Orion Arm,26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. For most of history, humanity did not recognize or understand the concept of the Solar System, the invention of the telescope led to the discovery of further planets and moons. The principal component of the Solar System is the Sun, a G2 main-sequence star that contains 99. 86% of the known mass. The Suns four largest orbiting bodies, the giant planets, account for 99% of the mass, with Jupiter. The remaining objects of the Solar System together comprise less than 0. 002% of the Solar Systems total mass, most large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earths orbit, known as the ecliptic
27.
Jan Oort
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Jan Hendrik Oort ForMemRS was a Dutch astronomer who made significant contributions to the understanding of the Milky Way and who was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy. ”In 1955, Oort’s name appeared in Life Magazine’s list of the 100 most famous living people. He has been described as “putting the Netherlands in the forefront of postwar astronomy. ”Oort determined that the Milky Way rotates and overturned the idea that the Sun was at its center. He discovered the galactic halo, a group of stars orbiting the Milky Way but outside the main disk. ”The Oort cloud, the Oort constants, and the Asteroid,1691 Oort, were all named after him. Oort was born in Franeker, a town in the Dutch province of Friesland, on April 28,1900. ”Several of Oort’s uncles were pastors. “My mother kept up her interests in that, at least in the years of her marriage. “But my father was interested in Church matters. ”In 1903 Oort’s parents moved to Oegstgeest, near Leiden. Oorts father, “was a medical director in a sanitorium for nervous illnesses. We lived in the house of the sanitorium, in a small forest which was very nice for the children, of course, to grow up in. ”Oort’s younger brother, John. In addition to John, Oort had two sisters and an older brother who died of diabetes when he was a student. Oort attended primary school in Oegstgeest and secondary school in Leiden, Oort later said that he had become interested in science and astronomy during his high-school years, and conjectured that his interest was stimulated by reading Jules Verne. His one hesitation about studying pure science was the concern that it “might alienate one a bit from people in general, ” as a result of which “one might not develop the human factor sufficiently. Oort chose Groningen partly because a well known astronomer, Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, was teaching there, after studying with Kapteyn, Oort decided on astronomy. “It was the personality of Professor Kapteyn which decided me entirely, “He was quite an inspiring teacher and especially his elementary astronomy lectures were fascinating. ”Oort began working on research with Kapteyn early in his third year. According to Oort one professor at Groningen who had influence on his education was physicist Frits Zernike. At Yale, Oort was responsible for making observations with the Observatory’s zenith telescope. “I worked on the problem of variation, ” he later recalled, “which is quite far away from the subjects I had so far been studying. ”Personally, he “felt somewhat lonesome in Yale, ” but also said that “some of my very best friends were made in these years in New Haven. ”In 1924, Oort returned to the Netherlands to work at Leiden University, where he served as a research assistant, becoming Conservator in 1926, Lecturer in 1930. In 1926, he received his doctorate from Groningen with a thesis on the properties of high-velocity stars, Oort provided two formulae that described galactic rotation, the two constants that figured in these formulae are now known as “Oort’s constants. He also showed that stars lying in the regions of the galactic disk rotated more slowly than those nearer the center
28.
Leiden Observatory
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Leiden Observatory is an astronomical observatory in the city of Leiden, the Netherlands. The observatory was located on the university building in the centre of Leiden before a new observatory building. It remained there until 1974 when the department moved to the science campus north-west of the city, a number of notable astronomers have worked or directed the observatory including Willem de Sitter, Ejnar Hertzsprung, and Jan Oort. The observatory was one of the first purpose-built observatories in Europe, though Golius used the observatory regularly, no publications came from its use by him. It is not known whether Golius had any other than Snellius quadrant at the observatory. In 1682 Burchardus de Volder became professor of mathematics at the university, during his tenure the observatory was enlarged, including a second turret to house a brass sextant which he purchased, and the rebuilding of the old turret. For the next two years Lotharius Zumbach de Coesfeld ran the observatory until his appointment as professor of mathematics in Kassel in 1708, between then and 1717 the observatory went without a director until Willem s Gravesande was appointed director. During his time at the observatory, s Gravesande purchase a number of new instruments including new telescopes and tools, S Gravesandes successor was Johan Lulofs who used the observatory to observe Halleys comet in 1759 and solar transits of Mercury in 1743 and 1753 and Venus in 1761. In November 1768 when Lulofs died, Dionysius van de Wijnpersse took over responsibility for the observatory until Pieter Nieuwland became its director in 1793 for a year until he died in 1794. For a number of years the curators attempted to find a suitable astronomer to look after the observatory, eventually employing Jan Frederik van Beeck Calkoen in 1799, in 1817 the observatory towers were pulled down and rebuilt. Kaiser also acquired a number of new instruments and telescopes with which he made observations including that of comets, planets, and binary stars. As a result of the increased interest in astronomy brought about due to Kaisers popular writings and teachings, from 1859 to 1909 the Netherlands civil time was set according to the local civil time at the observatory, communicated using the telegraphic network. In the early 19th Century the observatory formed an agreement with Union Observatory to allow researchers use of both facilities. The first visitor from Leiden was Ejnar Hertzsprung, by 1860 the new observatory building was completed. The new building was constructed in a side of the city inside the university’s botanical gardens. It consisted of a number of offices, living quarters for astronomers, in 1873 two new rooms were added to the building in order to house the tools required to verify nautical instruments, tools used to test compasses, sextants and other instruments. Two of the domes were rebuilt, one in 1875 and the other in 1889. More new buildings were constructed before the end of the 19th century including the Western tower in 1878, one to the East in 1898, in 1896 the observatory purchased their first photographic telescope, with a dome being built to house it between then and 1898
29.
Reflecting telescope
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A reflecting telescope is an optical telescope which uses a single or combination of curved mirrors that reflect light and form an image. The reflecting telescope was invented in the 17th century as an alternative to the telescope which. Although reflecting telescopes produce other types of aberrations, it is a design that allows for very large diameter objectives. Almost all of the telescopes used in astronomy research are reflectors. Reflecting telescopes come in many variations and may employ extra optical elements to improve image quality or place the image in a mechanically advantageous position. Since reflecting telescopes use mirrors, the design is referred to as a catoptric telescope. The idea that curved mirrors behave like lenses dates back at least to Alhazens 11th century treatise on optics, the potential advantages of using parabolic mirrors, primarily reduction of spherical aberration with no chromatic aberration, led to many proposed designs for reflecting telescopes. The most notable being James Gregory, who published a design for a ‘reflecting’ telescope in 1663. It would be ten years, before the experimental scientist Robert Hooke was able to build this type of telescope, Isaac Newton has been generally credited with building the first reflecting telescope in 1668. It used a spherically ground metal primary mirror and a diagonal mirror in an optical configuration that has come to be known as the Newtonian telescope. A curved primary mirror is the reflector telescopes basic optical element that creates an image at the focal plane, the distance from the mirror to the focal plane is called the focal length. The primary mirror in most modern telescopes is composed of a glass cylinder whose front surface has been ground to a spherical or parabolic shape. A thin layer of aluminum is deposited onto the mirror. Some telescopes use primary mirrors which are made differently, molten glass is rotated to make its surface paraboloidal, and is kept rotating while it cools and solidifies. The resulting mirror shape approximates a desired paraboloid shape that requires grinding and polishing to reach the exact figure needed. Reflecting telescopes, just like any other system, do not produce perfect images. The use of mirrors avoids chromatic aberration but they produce other types of aberrations, to avoid this problem most reflecting telescopes use parabolic shaped mirrors, a shape that can focus all the light to a common focus. Field curvature - The best image plane is in general curved and it is sometimes corrected by a field flattening lens
30.
Aperture
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In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of a system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. The aperture determines how collimated the admitted rays are, which is of importance for the appearance at the image plane. If an aperture is narrow, then highly collimated rays are admitted, a wide aperture admits uncollimated rays, resulting in a sharp focus only for rays coming from a certain distance. This means that a wide aperture results in an image that is sharp for things at the correct distance, the aperture also determines how many of the incoming rays are actually admitted and thus how much light reaches the image plane. In the human eye, the pupil is the aperture, an optical system typically has many openings or structures that limit the ray bundles. In general, these structures are called stops, and the stop is the stop that primarily determines the ray cone angle. In some contexts, especially in photography and astronomy, aperture refers to the diameter of the aperture stop rather than the stop or the opening itself. For example, in a telescope, the stop is typically the edges of the objective lens or mirror. One then speaks of a telescope as having, for example, note that the aperture stop is not necessarily the smallest stop in the system. Magnification and demagnification by lenses and other elements can cause a large stop to be the aperture stop for the system. In astrophotography, the aperture may be given as a measure or as the dimensionless ratio between that measure and the focal length. In other photography, it is given as a ratio. Sometimes stops and diaphragms are called apertures, even when they are not the stop of the system. The word aperture is used in other contexts to indicate a system which blocks off light outside a certain region. In astronomy, for example, a photometric aperture around a star usually corresponds to a window around the image of a star within which the light intensity is assumed. The aperture stop is an important element in most optical designs and its most obvious feature is that it limits the amount of light that can reach the image/film plane. This can be unavoidable, as in a telescope where one wants to collect as much light as possible, or deliberate
31.
Magellanic Clouds
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The Magellanic Clouds are two irregular dwarf galaxies visible from the southern hemisphere, they are members of the Local Group and are orbiting the Milky Way galaxy. Because they both show signs of a bar structure, they are reclassified as Magellanic spiral galaxies. Collectively they were known to Māori of New Zealand as Nga Patari-Kaihau or as Te Reporepo and were used as predictors of winds. The Magellanic Clouds have been known since the first millennium in Western Asia, the first preserved mention of the Large Magellanic Cloud is by the Persian astronomer Al Sufi. In Europe, the Clouds were first observed by Italian explorers Peter Martyr dAnghiera, subsequently, they were reported by Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan on its circumnavigation of the world in 1519–1522. However, naming the clouds after Magellan did not become widespread until much later, in Bayers Uranometria they are designated as nubecula major and nubecula minor. In the 1756 star map of the French astronomer Lacaille, they are designated as le Grand Nuage and le Petit Nuage. In Sri Lanka, from ancient times, these clouds have been referred to as the Maha Mera Paruwathaya meaning the great mountain, roughly 21° apart in the night sky, the true distance between them is roughly 75,000 light-years. Until the discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy in 1994, the LMC lies about 160,000 light years away, while the SMC is around 200,000. The LMC is about twice the diameter of the SMC, for comparison, the Milky Way is about 100,000 ly across. Observation and theoretical evidence suggest that the Magellanic Clouds have both been greatly distorted by tidal interaction with the Milky Way as they close to it. Streams of neutral hydrogen connect them to the Milky Way and to each other and their gravity has affected the Milky Way as well, distorting the outer parts of the galactic disk. Aside from their different structure and lower mass, they differ from our galaxy in two major ways, first, they are gas-rich, a higher fraction of their mass is hydrogen and helium compared to the Milky Way. They are also more metal-poor than the Milky Way, the youngest stars in the LMC and SMC have a metallicity of 0.5 and 0.25 times solar, respectively. Both are noted for their nebulae and young populations, but as in our own galaxy their stars range from the very young to the very old. The Large Magellanic Cloud was host galaxy to a supernova, the brightest observed in four centuries. Measurements with the Hubble Space Telescope, announced in 2006, suggest the Magellanic Clouds may be moving too fast to be long term companions of the Milky Way. They suggest the reason for this is due to a past interaction with the LMC splitting the SMC, and they have dubbed this smaller remnant the Mini Magellanic Cloud
32.
Adriaan Blaauw
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Adriaan Blaauw was a Dutch astronomer. Blaauw was born in Amsterdam to Cornelis Blaauw and Gesina Clasina Zwart, and studied at Leiden University, in 1948, he was appointed an associate professor at Leiden. In the 1950s he worked a few years at the Yerkes Observatory, Blaauw was closely involved in the founding of the European Southern Observatory, and was its general director from 1970 to 1975. In 1975, he returned to the Netherlands, becoming a professor at Leiden. From 1976 to 1979, he served as president of the International Astronomical Union and he chaired the committee for assigning scientific priorities for the observing programme of the astrometric satellite Hipparcos. His research has involved star formation, the motions of star clusters and stellar associations and his main contributions are the explanation of the origin of stars that move with high velocity in our galaxy and the description of star formation in associations. Among his many honours he was member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963, elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts. In 1989, he was awarded the Bruce Medal, in 1997, the University of Groningen instituted a Blaauw chair and Blaauw lecture in his honour. The asteroid 2145 Blaauw and the Blaauw Observatory are named after him and he died in 2010 in the city of Groningen. Asteroid 2145 Blaauw is named for him, oral History interview transcript with Adriaan Blaauw 19 August 1979, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
33.
Lodewijk Woltjer
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Lodewijk Woltjer is an astronomer, and the son of the astronomer Jan Woltjer. He studied at the University of Leiden under Jan Oort earning a PhD in astronomy in 1957 with a thesis on the Crab Nebula, from 1964 to 1974 he was Rutherford Professor of Astronomy and Chair of the Astronomy Department at Columbia University in New York. From 1975 to 1987 he was Director General of the European Southern Observatory, in 1994–1997 he was President of the International Astronomical Union. Woltjer was honored in 1987 with the Karl Schwarzschild Medal and he was the first Editor-in-Chief of The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review, inaugurated in 1989, and also the Editor of the Astronomical Journal in 1967 to 1974. Dr. Woltjer has been honored by membership in a number of European Academies of Sciences, including Belgian, British, Dutch, French, and Swedish. Grewing, M. Karl Schwarzschild Vorlesung 1987, Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft,70, 19–20, Bibcode, 1987MitAG.70. 19G, retrieved 2011-01-22 Léna, P
34.
Riccardo Giacconi
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Riccardo Giacconi is an Italian Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid the foundations of X-ray astronomy. He is currently a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, born in Genoa, Italy, Giacconi received his Laurea from the University of Milan before moving to the US to pursue a career in astrophysics research. Since cosmic X-ray radiation is absorbed by the Earths atmosphere, space-based telescopes are needed for X-ray astronomy, Giacconi also applied his expertise to other fields of astronomy, becoming the first director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope. Giacconi was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002 for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, during that time he also held the position of Director General of the European Southern Observatory. He is currently principal investigator for the Chandra Deep Field-South project with NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory
35.
Catherine Cesarsky
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Catherine Jeanne Cesarsky is a French astronomer, known for her successful research activities in several central areas of modern astrophysics. She was formerly president of the International Astronomical Union and the general of the European Southern Observatory. Born in France, Catherine Cesarsky was largely raised in Argentina and she graduated with a PhD in Astronomy in 1971 from Harvard University, and for several years worked at the California Institute of Technology. In 1974, she moved to France, becoming a member of the Service dAstrophysique, Direction des Sciences de la Matière. She then established her career in France, from 1985 to 1993, she was the Head of SAp. At present, she is the High Commissioner for Atomic Energy in France, advisor to the French government for science and she chairs the Science Program Committee of the French space agency, CNES, and the Consultative Committee EURATOM - Fusion. From August 2006 to August 2009, she was President of the International Astronomical Union and she is recipient of the 1998 COSPAR Space Science Award, member or Foreign member of various Academies, and Doctor Honoris Causa from the Geneva University. Catherine Cesarsky is Commandeur de l’Ordre national du Mérite and Commandeur de l’Ordre de la Légion d’honneur, dr. Cesarsky is known for her research activities in several central areas of modern astrophysics. The first part of her career was devoted to the high-energy domain. g. in connection with supernovae and she then turned to infrared astronomy. She was the Principal Investigator of the ISOCAM camera on board the Infrared Space Observatory of the European Space Agency and these were consolidated through further observations with the ESO VLT, the satellites Spitzer and now Herschel. Recipient of the 1998 COSPAR Space Sciences Award, Chevalier de lOrdre National du Mérite Chevalier de la Légion dHonneur Officier de lOrdre national du Mérite
36.
Tim de Zeeuw
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Pieter Timotheus Tim de Zeeuw is a Dutch astronomer specializing in the formation, structure and dynamics of galaxies. He was educated at Leiden, gaining a degree in mathematics in 1976 and he graduated from Leiden with a PhD in astronomy in 1984. After stints in the USA at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at Caltech, in 2003, he was appointed the scientific director of Leiden Observatory, and since September 2007, he has been the Director General of ESO. In 2010, he was awarded the Brouwer Award by the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society and he is married to astronomer Ewine van Dishoeck. He received a degree in mathematics from Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 1976 and he graduated with a PhD in astronomy from the same university in 1984. From 1984, he worked in the USA, first as a long-term Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then, from 1988 and he came back to the Netherlands in 1990 to become Professor of Theoretical Astronomy at Leiden University. NOVAs mission is to train young astronomers at the highest international level, in 2003, he was appointed Scientific Director of Leiden Observatory, a research institute in the College of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of Leiden University. Tim de Zeeuws research concentrates on the formation, structure and dynamics of galaxies, including our own, a significant second line of research is the study of the origin, structure, and evolution of young stellar groups in the Solar Neighbourhood. In 1995, he initiated a project with R. Bacon and R. Davies to build SAURON, Tim de Zeeuw has -authored 185 refereed papers and many other contributing papers. He has supervised the projects of 25 master students and has guided the research of 60 graduate students and postdocs. He holds honorary doctorates from the Université Claude Bernard Lyon and the University of Chicago, between 2003 and 2006, he was a member of ESOs governing body, the Council, and chaired the Council Scientific Strategy Working Group. In this capacity he contributed to the development of ESOs strategic goals in 2004 and to changes in the ESO committee structure including the new terms of reference for the STC and OPC. He was the author of a report to Council outlining three scenarios for ESOs future role in European astronomy. In 2006/7, he chaired the Science Vision Working Group set up by ASTRONET, the Science Vision Working Group established a global European Science Vision for Astronomy for the next 20 years. RAS Group Award for the SAURON Team,2013 Brouwer Award of the Dynamical Division at the American Astronomical Society,2009 Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society,2007 Dr. Sc. University of Chicago,2007 Elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,2006 Asteroid 10970 named de Zeeuw by the International Astronomical Union,2006 Dr. Sc
37.
Andes
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The Andes or Andean Mountains are the longest continental mountain range in the world. They are a range of highlands along the western edge of South America. This range is about 7,000 km long, about 200 to 700 km wide, the Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Along their length, the Andes are split into several ranges, the Andes are the location of several high plateaus – some of which host major cities, such as Quito, Bogotá, Arequipa, Medellín, Sucre, Mérida and La Paz. The Altiplano plateau is the worlds second-highest after the Tibetan plateau and these ranges are in turn grouped into three major divisions based on climate, the Tropical Andes, the Dry Andes, and the Wet Andes. The Andes are the worlds highest mountain range outside of Asia, the highest mountain outside Asia, Mount Aconcagua, rises to an elevation of about 6,961 m above sea level. The peak of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorean Andes is farther from the Earths center than any other location on the Earths surface, the worlds highest volcanoes are in the Andes, including Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border, which rises to 6,893 m. The etymology of the word Andes has been debated, the majority consensus is that it derives from the Quechua word anti, which means east as in Antisuyu, one of the four regions of the Inca Empire. In the northern part of the Andes, the isolated Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range is considered to be part of the Andes. The term cordillera comes from the Spanish word cordel, meaning rope, the Andes range is about 200 km wide throughout its length, except in the Bolivian flexure where it is about 640 kilometres wide. The Andes are the result of plate tectonics processes, caused by the subduction of oceanic crust beneath the South American plate. The main cause of the rise of the Andes is the compression of the rim of the South American Plate due to the subduction of the Nazca Plate. In the south, the Andes share a boundary with the former Patagonia Terrane. To the west, the Andes end at the Pacific Ocean, from a geographical approach, the Andes are considered to have their western boundaries marked by the appearance of coastal lowlands and a less rugged topography. The Andes Mountains also contain large quantities of iron ore located in mountains within the range. The Andean orogen has a series of bends or oroclines, the Bolivian Orocline is a seaward concave bending in the coast of South America and the Andes Mountains at about 18° S. At this point the orientation of the Andes turns from Northwest in Peru to South in Chile, the Andean segment north and south of the orocline have been rotated 15° to 20° counter clockwise and clockwise respectively. The Bolivian Orocline area overlaps with the area of maximum width of the Altiplano Plateau, the specific point at 18° S where the coastline bends is known as the Arica Elbow
38.
CERN
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The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, the organization is based in a northwest suburb of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border, Israel is the only non-European country granted full membership. The main site at Meyrin hosts a large computing facility, which is used to store and analyse data from experiments. Researchers need remote access to facilities, so the lab has historically been a major wide area network hub. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web, the convention establishing CERN was ratified on 29 September 1954 by 12 countries in Western Europe. The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the council was dissolved. CERNs first president was Sir Benjamin Lockspeiser, edoardo Amaldi was the general secretary of CERN at its early stages when operations were still provisional, while the first Director-General was Felix Bloch. The laboratory was originally devoted to the study of atomic nuclei, therefore, the laboratory operated by CERN is commonly referred to as the European laboratory for particle physics, which better describes the research being performed there. Several important achievements in physics have been made through experiments at CERN. The 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Carlo Rubbia, the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to CERN staff researcher Georges Charpak for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber. The World Wide Web began as a CERN project named ENQUIRE, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, Berners-Lee and Cailliau were jointly honoured by the Association for Computing Machinery in 1995 for their contributions to the development of the World Wide Web. Based on the concept of hypertext, the project was intended to facilitate the sharing of information between researchers, the first website was activated in 1991. On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, a copy of the original first webpage, created by Berners-Lee, is still published on the World Wide Web Consortiums website as a historical document. Prior to the Webs development, CERN had pioneered the introduction of Internet technology, a short history of this period can be found at CERN. ch. More recently, CERN has become a facility for the development of computing, hosting projects including the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE. It also hosts the CERN Internet Exchange Point, one of the two main internet exchange points in Switzerland. 48×10−5, a measurement with 6. 0-sigma significance. However, on 23 February, CERN stated in a release that the results were flawed due to an incorrectly connected GPS-synchronization cable. In March 2012, the ICARUS Collaboration reported that the measurement would be reproduced by both OPERA and ICARUS, further tests, after fixing the GPS connector, showed speed measurements consistent with the speed of light from four experiments at Gran Sasso, including OPERA
39.
Geneva
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Geneva is the second most populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situated where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Republic, the municipality has a population of 198,072, and the canton has 484,736 residents. In 2014, the compact agglomération du Grand Genève had 946,000 inhabitants in 212 communities in both Switzerland and France, within Swiss territory, the commuter area named Métropole lémanique contains a population of 1.25 million. This area is essentially spread east from Geneva towards the Riviera area and north-east towards Yverdon-les-Bains, Geneva is the city that hosts the highest number of international organizations in the world. It is also the place where the Geneva Conventions were signed, Geneva was ranked as the worlds ninth most important financial centre for competitiveness by the Global Financial Centres Index, ahead of Frankfurt, and third in Europe behind London and Zürich. A2009 survey by Mercer found that Geneva has the third-highest quality of life of any city in the world, the city has been referred to as the worlds most compact metropolis and the Peace Capital. In 2009 and 2011, Geneva was ranked as, respectively, the city was mentioned in Latin texts, by Caesar, with the spelling Genava, probably from a Celtic toponym *genawa- from the stem *genu-, in the sense of a bending river or estuary. The medieval county of Geneva in Middle Latin was known as pagus major Genevensis or Comitatus Genevensis, the name takes various forms in modern languages, Geneva /dʒᵻˈniːvə/ in English, French, Genève, German, Genf, Italian, Ginevra, and Romansh, Genevra. The city in origin shares its name, *genawa estuary, with the Italian port city of Genoa, Geneva was an Allobrogian border town, fortified against the Helvetii tribe, when the Romans took it in 121 BC. It became Christian under the Late Roman Empire, and acquired its first bishop in the 5th century, having been connected to the bishopric of Vienne in the 4th. In the Middle Ages, Geneva was ruled by a count under the Holy Roman Empire until the late 14th century, around this time the House of Savoy came to dominate the city. In the 15th century, a republican government emerged with the creation of the Grand Council. In 1541, with Protestantism in the ascendancy, John Calvin, by the 18th century, however, Geneva had come under the influence of Catholic France, which cultivated the city as its own. France also tended to be at odds with the ordinary townsfolk, in 1798, revolutionary France under the Directory annexed Geneva. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, on 1 June 1814, in 1907, the separation of Church and State was adopted. Geneva flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries, becoming the seat of international organizations. Geneva is located at 46°12 North, 6°09 East, at the end of Lake Geneva. It is surrounded by two chains, the Alps and the Jura
40.
Munich
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Munich is the capital and largest city of the German state of Bavaria, on the banks of River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg, the Munich Metropolitan Region is home to 5.8 million people. According to the Globalization and World Rankings Research Institute Munich is considered an alpha-world city, the name of the city is derived from the Old/Middle High German term Munichen, meaning by the monks. It derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who ran a monastery at the place that was later to become the Old Town of Munich, Munich was first mentioned in 1158. From 1255 the city was seat of the Bavarian Dukes, black and gold—the colours of the Holy Roman Empire—have been the citys official colours since the time of Ludwig the Bavarian, when it was an imperial residence. Following a final reunification of the Wittelsbachian Duchy of Bavaria, previously divided and sub-divided for more than 200 years, like wide parts of the Holy Roman Empire, the area recovered slowly economically. In 1918, during the German Revolution, the house of Wittelsbach, which governed Bavaria since 1180, was forced to abdicate in Munich. In the 1920s, Munich became home to political factions, among them the NSDAP. During World War II, Munich was heavily bombed and more than 50% of the entire city, the postwar period was characterised by American occupation until 1949 and a strong increase of population and economic power during the years of the Wirtschaftswunder after 1949. The city is home to corporations like BMW, Siemens, MAN, Linde, Allianz and MunichRE as well as many small. Munich is home to national and international authorities, major universities, major museums. Its numerous architectural attractions, international events, exhibitions and conferences. Munich is one of the most prosperous and fastest growing cities in Germany and it is a top-ranked destination for migration and expatriate location, despite being the municipality with the highest density of population in Germany. Munich nowadays hosts more than 530,000 people of foreign background, the year 1158 is assumed to be the foundation date, which is the earliest date the city is mentioned in a document. The document was signed in Augsburg, by that time the Guelph Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, had built a bridge over the river Isar next to a settlement of Benedictine monks—this was on the Old Salt Route and a toll bridge. In 1175, Munich was officially granted city status and received fortification, in 1180, with the trial of Henry the Lion, Otto I Wittelsbach became Duke of Bavaria and Munich was handed over to the Bishop of Freising. In 1240, Munich was transferred to Otto II Wittelsbach and in 1255, Duke Louis IV, a native of Munich, was elected German king in 1314 and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 1328. He strengthened the position by granting it the salt monopoly
41.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
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France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
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Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
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Belgium
Germany
France
Netherlands
Sweden
Denmark
Switzerland
Italy
Portugal
United Kingdom
Finland
Spain
Czech Republic
Austria
Poland
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. Bibcode:2009Natur.461.1254T. doi:10.1038/nature08459. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
