Credit Swinburne Astronomy Productions/ESO
Wyoming Stargazing, an astronomy non-profit, is hosting a free online speaker series this spring and summer. The next featured speaker is Suzanne Ramsay from the European Southern Observatory in Munich.
Ramsay is the instrumentation project manager for the Extremely Large Telescope, which will have a mirror that s 39 meters across when it s finished being built. The current telescopes that astronomers use around the world are the largest ones for the optical and infrared astronomy that we re talking about they re eight to ten meters in diameter, she said. It s a huge jump in size.
Ramsay said that increase in size helps astronomers see fainter and more distant objects.
The age of Big Glass is far from over.
While radio astronomy and space telescopes are all the rage in the 21st century, ground-based optical instruments still do cutting-edge science. And once it goes online, the European Southern Observatoryâs Extremely Large Telescope, under construction at 10,000 feet atop Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Andes, will give astronomers a 39-meter â thatâs nearly 128 feet â mirror to study black holes, take measurements of the universeâs rate of expansion and maybe even observe directly planets outside out solar system as the search for habitable Earth-like exoplanets continues to heat up.
Dr. Suzanne Ramsay, a Scottish-born astronomer stationed just outside of Munich, is the instrumentation project manager for what will be the largest optical telescope on the planet. She leads development of the instruments â the latest in imagers, spectrometers and other insanely sensitive technology â that will gather and analyze
As a young girl growing up in small-town Vermont, Aki Roberge dreamed of other worlds.
An avid science fiction fan, she wondered if the kinds of planets she saw in the âStar Warsâ movies, with their varied climates and cultures, creatures and civilizations, might really exist.
Today, and for more than a decade now, she actually explores such possibilities, searching not for parched Tatooine or ice-clad Hoth, but for real exoplanets â planets orbiting other stars.
Dr. Aki Roberge, a research scientist in NASAâs Exoplanet and Stellar Astrophysics Lab at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, right outside Washington, D.C., will talk about her life, her work and the latest breakthroughs in this relatively new branch of astronomy at 7 p.m. Friday. Itâs part of Wyoming Stargazingâs âThe World Above the Tetonsâ speaker series.