Observatories

Who knows what new discoveries these observatories will uncover?

In a time when women were discouraged from studying math and science, Roman became a research astronomer and was instrumental in taking NASA's Hubble Space Telescope from an idea to reality and establishing NASA’s program of space-based astronomical observatories.

Pioneering space observatories like Webb only come to fruition when dedicated individuals work together to surmount the challenge of building something that has never been done before.

There have been inroads against ever growing urban illumination. The International Dark Sky Association in Tucson, Arizona, a group that claims 3,600 members in more than 70 countries, says efforts to curb excess light are under way from the Australian Outback to Britain's Sherwood Forest. In the Czech Republic, an anti-air pollution law also fights light pollution by requiring shielded fixtures to block upward beams. Laws have also been enacted in Chile, thanks to persuasive astronomers who staff the three big observatories there.

Scientists at the LIGO and VIRGO observatories detected and confirmed the first gravitational waves produced by the collision and merger of a black hole with a neutron star, not once but twice within 10 days of each other. Previously confirmed gravitational wave detections were the results of either the collisions of a black hole and another black hole or a neutron star with a neutron star, not one of each.

The folks at the Carnegie Observatories recently stumbled across something rare as they sifted through their archives to help a researcher.