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Gemini Observatory Probes Galaxy NGC 1068 Churning Core

Posted by chrisd on from the you-put-your-spectrograph-in-my-fiber dept.

Mr. Intel writes: "Using the Gemini Telescope at Mauna Kea, scientists have created a 3D movie of a distant galaxy. How you ask? By using a new instrument, the Integral Field Unitor or IFU, they can collect vast amounts of light and scan the beams using 1500 special optical fibers. This allows the researchers to track stars and interstellar gas motion in the galaxy. There is a press release and an images page. SciAm also has an article."

2 of 6 comments (clear)

  1. I worked on a prototype for this.... by Doctor+Fishboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ....about 6 years ago for my thesis project.

    The version I worked on had 37 elements instead of 1500, and required the individual alignment of 15 micron diameter optical fibers with individual lenslets in an optical array. It was painstaking work, to say the least, and my hat goes off to the Gemini IFU team for getting their first light for this instrument at long last!

    Dr Fish

  2. Re:if it gets... by Avatar1000 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree - but with some reservations. I love cosmology and astrophysics (if had had the discipline to do better in the maths, I might have become a astrophysicist); but I wish that more of our resources were spent "Closer To Home".
    I'd really like to see an intuitively simple 3-d map of all the stars (and their characteristics) within ~75 lightyears of Sol. Or a complete map of all solar system bodies (or at least, everything above ~50 meters in diameter) and their compositions, histories, etc.
    The idea behind these nearer objectives is to help in getting people to colonize space; nobody will go unless maps are made and resources assessed. And who knows - maybe these close you-can-almost-touch-them bodies will get people dreaming about space again, and excited about going there.
    None of which is to say that larger scale studies aren't fascinating, and vital to some very fundamental science. Quite the opposite, in fact, but I find discovered territories a lot less exciting if I can never expect to live to see a trip to them.
    Just my two cents... and check out the NASA Origins Program at: http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov/
    they are doing Large scale stuff too, but they seem to have our interstellar backyard firmly targetted.

    --
    I have no Sig.