University of Hawaii names Institute for Astronomy director washingtontimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtontimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Maui News
Veteran Hawaii island astronomer Doug Simons has been selected as the next director of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, which oversees observatories on Haleakala and Maunakea.
Simons will assume the post on Sept. 1, subject to the formal posting on the agenda of the UH Board of Regents’ meeting on Thursday.
He has worked on Maunakea since 1990 after earning his Ph.D. from the institute, and has also served as the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope executive director since 2012. Simons was the Gemini Observatory director from 2006 to 2011.
“Returning to the IfA, where I received a fabulous education, brings me full circle,” Simons said in a news release Monday. “It is an honor to be chosen to lead an institution so well established globally in astronomical research, education and technology innovation. Among my goals is to broaden IfA’s impact outside of astronomy, creating a department that is an example worldwide of the potential arising fr
New Explanation for Planet Nine Looks to the Extreme mysteriousuniverse.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mysteriousuniverse.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Astronomers have found a pretty weird binary system about 450 light years from Earth: Neither of its components is a star. Instead, one is a brown dwarf, and the other appears to be a planet orbiting it! Even then, the brown dwarf is on the lower end of things. If it were any less massive it would be a planet itself.
The system is called CFHTWIR-Oph 98, but we ll call it Oph 98 for short. It was found a few years ago in ground-based observations using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope s infrared WIRCAM camera (hence the first part of the object s name) in a region of the galaxy where stars are being born which we see in the constellation of Ophiuchus (hence the second name part). It was observed in 2006 and 2012, and identified as a brown dwarf an object more massive than a planet but too lightweight to ignite sustained nuclear fusion in its core like a star.
An unusually unsettled summer is being experienced in
Middle Earth, particularly on New Zealand s South Island where substantial snow has blanketed the mountains over recent days and weeks.
There s a fresh accumulation of pow-pow on the peaks around
Queenstown this week, after conditions in the Lakes area allowed for flakes to settle.
Frigid polar air left Antarctica on Sunday, and it has lingered over Australasia ever-since. As reported by odt.co.nz, Weatherwatch says temperatures will continue to be down across New Zealand as a storm near Stewart Island slowly tracks eastwards, dredging up the cold. The forecaster elaborated, adding that temps would hold below average for the remainder of the week, with single-digit highs likely through parts of Otago and Southland.