Caty Pilachowski IUB Astronomy

Giant Telescopes, Ancient Skies:

Beginnings…

This sketch of a telescope was included in a letter

written by Giovanpattista della Porta in August 1609

Thomas Harriet’s Drawings of the

Moon and Sun

Telescopes and

how they work

from lenses…

to mirrors

Technology moves forward…

The 3.5-meter WIYN telescope Kitt Peak, Arizona

New Telescope Technology

“Fast” mirror Lightweight mirror

Mirror shape controlled Mechanically simpler

mount Temperature control

The WIYN Mirror

The WIYN New Technology “Dome”

Compact telescope chamber Open for ventilation Insulated to keep cool Heated spaces kept separate

Breaking the “cost curve”

New technology provides better performance at lower cost

WIYN

in 6-8 meter telescopes

WIYN TECHNOLOGY

New technology telescopes give new views of the universe

How is the Universe put together?What is the Universe made of?Is there life elsewhere?

How is the Universe put together? The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy

Probe tells us about the state of the Universe 400,000 years after the Big Bang.

How did the UniverseHow did the Universeevolve from this…evolve from this…

…to this?

The cosmic web of intergalactic gas and galaxies in a young universe

Intergalacticgas

Clumpsconcentratedby darkmatter lead to galaxies

Observing the assembly of galaxies

Galaxy building blocks

observed withHubble

Simulation

WMAP also providesevidence of the first stars

Tiny fluctuations in polarization

About 200 million years after the Big Bang

Can we see the first stars?

Simulation

What we might see with a 30-meter telescope(Barton et al., 2004)

4 million LY

hydrogen emission from hot stars

Green=hot gas yellow=stars

The composition of stars and gas:

everythingelse

90% hydrogen atoms

10% helium atoms

Less than 1% everything else

What is the Universe made of?

But ordinary matter is only part of the story…

96% of the Universe is something else

Galaxy interactions require more mass than we can see

Antennae Galaxy (HST)

Computersimulation

The real thing

Dark Matter The universe contains additional matter

we cannot see Dark matter interacts with normal

matter through gravity Dark matter does NOT interact with light

the way the normal matter does The Universe contains 5 or 6 times

MORE dark matter than normal matterAll galaxies are embedded in clouds of

dark matter We do not know what it is!

“Redshift” of Galaxies

The spectra of galaxies are shifted to the red: galaxies are moving away from us.

The farther away a galaxy is, the faster it recedes from us!

Hubble’s Law

Distance - Velocity Relation

0

1000

2000

3000

0 20000 40000

Velocity (km/sec)

Dis

tan

ce (

LY

)

The speeds of very distant galaxies tell us the Universe

is expanding faster today than in the past

The brightness of stellar explosions tells

us how far away galaxies are

The universe is expanding faster today than it did in early times

This expansion cannot be caused by ordinary or dark matter, which slows expansion.

The acceleration suggests a new repulsive force (anti-gravity) acting on very large scales

The Universe is speeding up!

Dark energy accounts for 73% of the content of the universe

Dark matter accounts for 23%The content we’re familiar with is only 4%

The New Force Is Called “Dark Energy”

We don’t know

What is Dark Energy?

Identifying what dark energy is requires bigger

telescopes and new techniques

Is there life elsewhere?

Artist’s conception of 55 Cancri’s planetary system

More than 150 planets found around other stars

Most are vastly different fromour Solar System

detecting planets directly is hardplanets are small and dimplanets are near much brighter stars

detecting planets directly requires large telescopes (30-meters) and/or special instruments

Detecting Planets

Imaging planets around other stars

“Brown Dwarf” orbiting a star

at the same distance as

Saturn from our Sun

Gemini/Keck AO detectionby Michael Liu (IfA), 2002

With a 30-metertelescope we canobtain the spectraof planets aroundother stars to searchfor the signatures of life

Simulation by Sudarskyet al. 2003

Simulation of the spectra of 55 Cancri’s planets

Connecting the First Nanoseconds to the Origin of Life

New Telescopes to Answer

New Questions 30-meter telescope 8-meter survey telescope James Webb Space Telescope Virtual Observatory

The giant, segmented-mirror

telescope

To study the formation of the first

stars and galaxies will require a new

generation of larger telescopes

JWST

8.4-meters Triple-fold optical design 3 billion pixel-camera 30,000 gigabytes each night

LSSTLarge-apertureSynoptic

SurveyTelescope

Survey the sky each weekReal-time data analysis3 billion sources + transients

Exploring the Dark Universe

with LSST

WIYN and the Future:

ODI

One Degree Imager1 billion pixels:

32,000 x 32,000 pixels“on chip” image correction

text

The importance of image quality

typical ground-based image

Hubble image

WIYN image

The Ring Nebula

ODI in the Astronomical LandscapeThe best wide-field imager, current or planned

Diagnostic Imaging

Information rate 2nd only to LSST (in 2012+)

Image qualitymedian seeing 0.7”sampling 0.11”image correction

Time resolution2-4s readoutsfaster for small regions

IU Science with ODI

Star clusters and stellar evolution

The history of nearby galaxiesSurveys of faint and distant

galaxies

Astronomy is looking up