From CNN, April 10, 2019: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains the big news from the Event Horizon Telescope on its first direct observation of a black hole at the center of a galaxy named M87. M87 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo.
astrophysics
The Event Horizon Telescope—a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration—was designed to capture images of a black hole. On April 10, in coordinated news conferences across the globe, researchers revealed that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.
From CNN, April 6, 2019: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains a result from the GRAVITY collaboration, which put Einstein’s theory of relativity to the test, making measurements of light near a black hole.
The optical lenses for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument have seen their first light. Fermilab contributed key components to DESI, including the corrector barrel and its support structures, along with vital software that ensures the instrument’s 5,000 robotic positioners are precisely aligned with their celestial targets.
Particle detectors recorded neutrinos from supernova SN1987A hours before telescopes saw the first light. Thirty years later, scientists around the world are eager to detect neutrinos from another one. The international Fermilab-hosted Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment will be looking for them. These neutrinos can tell us more about supernovae themselves and may hint at new physics that could upend the Standard Model of particle physics.
For The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2019: Axions? Phantom energy? Astrophysicists scramble to patch a hole in the universe, rewriting cosmic history in the process. Fermilab scientist Josh Frieman is quoted in this article.
From This Week in Science, Feb. 20, 2019:
This podcast features Antonella Palmese, a postdoctoral research associate at Fermilab and a member of the Dark Energy Survey, which recently completed its six-year observation of a section of the southern sky.
From CNN, Feb. 16, 2019: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln discusses the Zwicky Transient Facility, a massive sky-survey instrument designed to scan the heavens and look for “transients” or things that brighten unexpectedly. When the instrument sees a change, alerts go out to other astronomers subscribed to the service, who can then use even more powerful telescopes to study the transient event in detail. Even the public can get a daily summary of the previous night’s happenings.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will manage unprecedented volumes of data produced each night. Scheduled to come online in the early 2020s, the LSST will use a 3.2-gigapixel camera to photograph a giant swath of the heavens. It’ll keep it up for 10 years, every night with a clear sky, creating the world’s largest astronomical stop-motion movie.
From 365 Days of Astronomy, Feb. 9, 2019: In this podcast, The Dark Energy Survey started in 2013 to map dark energy over 5000 square degrees of sky. Writer and poet Amy Catanzano visited Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory during the Dark Energy Survey. In this podcast, Amy discusses her work in quantum poetics, her experience with the Dark Energy Survey and shares some of her poetry.