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30 September 2010: As part of the Gemini South NICI Planet-finding campaign, Beth Biller and team have found an unusual star-brown dwarf pair. PZ Tel A, a young sun-like star, was imaged with NICI (Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager) using adaptive optics to detect the brown dwarf (PZ Tel B), which is in a highly elliptical orbit. Specialized image analysis techniques were used to remove a vast majority of light from PZ Tel A in this image (left). This is one of few brown dwarfs imaged at a distance closer than 30 Astronomical Units from its parent star. On the right the range of sizes of a brown dwarf compared to Jupiter and the Earth (to scale) is illustrated.Results are being published in ApJ letters 2010 ApJ 720 L82.

31 August 2010: This image of NGC 6334 was produced with the NOAO Extremely Wide-Field Infra-Red Mosaic camera (NEWFIRM) during commissioning on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at CTIO. See the Newsletter cover image for more details. Please note that with Newsletter 102 NOAO and NSO have begun separate publications. NSO will shortly offer its own publication.

8 June 2010: The central star is HD 56925, a massive Wolf-Rayet star nearing the end of its lifetime, which is responsible for the wind sweeping through the surrounding molecular cloud. Also listed as NGC 2359, this image was obtained at CTIO by the PROMPT consortium. When not chasing gamma-ray bursts, PROMPT serves a wide variety of users, including Star Shadows Remote Observatory (SSRO), a group of astrophotographers. This image was captured using broadband and narrowband filters: the blue-green color is oxygen emission.

12 May 2010: NEWFIRM, an infrared camera now installed on the CTIO Blanco 4- meter, imaged NGC 1999 at the KPNO Mayall 4-m before going to the southern hemisphere. Here a combination of infrared filters from NEWFIRM (blue) and from the ESO Herschel Space Observatory (green and red) show the region around the triple star known as V380 Orionis, near the top of the image. Previously thought to be an opaque cloud, the dark region now appears to be a cavity in the dense gas and dust — a hole in space carved out by a jet from one of the young stars in the V380 Ori system.

19 April 2010: Counterclockwise from top; Leaving KPNO, Arriving at CTIO, NEWFIRM camera hoisted to Blanco main floor, NEWFIRM undergoing a major filter change and thorough internal inspection in the new CTIO clean room, Guider assembled into the truss

10 March 2010: Our national astronomy observatory was dedicated on Kitt Peak 50 years ago in March 1960. In celebration of the 50th anniversary, Kitt Peak National Observatory’s first Director Dr. Aden B. Meinel will speak about the history of the national observatory and Bernard Siquieros, Education Curator of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s Cultural Center and Museum, will share a Tohono O’odham perspective on the meaning and history of Iolkam Du’ag, or Kitt Peak, and the Baboquivari Range. The program entitled “Why Kitt Peak?” will be presented at the Steward Observatory, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Room N210, at 7:30 pm on Monday, March 22nd; it is free of charge and open to the public. Following the talks, the telescope in the Steward Observatory dome will be open for public viewing of the night sky (weather permitting). The site for the proposed national observatory was constrained by practical considerations that limited the choice to …

1 March 2010: In celebration of the 50th anniversary of our national astronomy observatory, Dr. Alan Dressler will present “The Living History of the Universe” at the Marriott University Park, 880 E 2nd Street, on March 17 at 7:30 pm. This special program is available to the public at no cost. Every minute of every day, light from the remote past arrives at Earth, much of it originating before the Earth itself was born. Astronomers look at the history of the Universe as it actually happened, by gathering the light from faint, distant galaxies that are frozen as slices in time. Drawing connections between what we see in the young, distant Universe to the one of our own time is challenging, however. A small history of this difficult endeavor, recounted by one of its key players, reveals how science works and the persistence of human curiosity. Alan Dressler is an astronomer at the …

25 February 2010: With Issue 101 we will begin producing only two issues a year, in March and September. Additionally, we are changing the section organization to make the Newsletter more useful and informative to our readers.

15 February 2010: The groundbreaking for the viewpoint Vista Sidney Wolff took place on February 1, 2010 on the road to the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. The site features a beautiful view of the SOAR and Gemini telescopes and also of the site selected for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The construction of the vista point is a tribute to Dr. Sidney C. Wolff's leadership in enabling the construction of these world-class facilities on Cerro Pachon high in the Andes mountains. Dr. Wolff served as President of the SOAR Board and first Director of the Gemini Observatory.

26 January 2010: It has been assumed for some time that binary supermassive black holes (SMBH) should be common in the universe, given that galaxies regularly interact and merge and that most, if not all, galaxies contain a SMBH. Such a SMBH will only be detected as a quasar when it is accreting matter. And galaxy merging is a leading proposal to trigger such accretion. Now the first luminous, spatially resolved binary quasar that clearly inhabits an interacting/merging galaxy pair has been reported. ( SDSS J1254+0846: A Binary Quasar Caught in the Act of Merging, Green et. al., Ap. J accepted Jan. 2010 ). The unique properties of this system allow detailed numerical simulations to create plausible scenarios for the histories of both the host galaxies and the SMBH that inhabit them. The first spectrum confirming this binary QSO was taken by A. Myers at the KPNO Mayall 4-meter using R-C Spectrograph on …

15 January 2010: Two symposia will take place in Tucson during the month of March, 2010. From First Light to Newborn Stars happens from March 14-17, followed by The Eventful Universe March 17-20. On March 17th both symposia will meet together for talks by our distinguished invited speakers (including Vera Rubin, Nick Suntzeff, Heather Morrison, Charlie Lada, and Alan Dressler) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Observatory. Please go to the link above to register for either symposium.

6 January 2010: Most searches for planets around other stars, also known as exoplanets, focus on Sun-like stars. Those searches have proven successful, turning up more than 400 alien worlds. However, Sun-like stars aren’t the only potential homes for planets. New research by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) confirms that planet formation is a natural by-product of star formation, even around stars much heftier than the Sun.

6 January 2010: Although the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) comes to a formal close this weekend with a ceremony in Padua, Italy, numerous core programs conducted during the year will carry on in 2010 and beyond, many led by educators and outreach professionals in the United States, including NOAO’s Dr. Stephen Pompea (Galileoscope) and Dr. Connie Walker (Dark Skies Awareness).

6 January 2010: Hundreds of thousands of school children around the country will be a ble to explore the Moon, planets, and our galaxy thanks to a $250,000 donation by Ric and Jean Edelman. The Edelmans, founders of Edelman Financial Services, one of the country’s leading independent financial advisory firms, have donated $250,000 to the American Astronomical Society to fund the acquisition and distribution of more than 15,000 Galileoscopes to schoolteachers nationwide and train them on adding the telescope kits to their curriculum. The program is operated in partnership with the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

5 January 2010: For almost two centuries, humans have looked up at a bright star called Epsilon Aurigae and watched with their own eyes as it seemed to disappear into the night sky, slowly fading before coming back to life again. Today, as another dimming of the system is underway, mysteries about the star persist. Though astronomers know that Epsilon Aurigae is eclipsed by a dark companion object every 27 years, the nature of both the star and object has remained unclear.Now, new observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope — in combination with archived ultraviolet, visible and other infrared data — point to one of two competing theories, and a likely solution to this age-old puzzle. One theory holds that the bright star is a massive supergiant, periodically eclipsed by two tight-knit stars inside a swirling, dusty disk. The second theory holds that the bright star is in fact a dying star with …

4 January 2010: University of Notre Dame astronomer Peter Garnavich and a team of collaborators used the NSF’s 4-m Blanco telescope in Cerro Tololo, Chile to discover a distant star that exploded when its center became so hot that matter and anti-matter particle pairs were created. The star, dubbed Y-155, began its life around 200 times the mass of the sun but probably became “pair-unstable” and triggered a runaway thermonuclear reaction that made it visible nearly halfway across the universe.Garnavich and his collaborators discovered the exploding star during the ESSENCE supernova search, a six-year NOAO Survey Program, that identified more than 200 weaker stellar explosions.

18 December 2009: This special celebratory issue marks the establishment of the National Observatory 50 years ago with the dedication of Kitt Peak National Observatory, providing open access based on peer review to forefront scientific capabilities. It also marks the 100th issue of the NOAO/NSO Newsletter.

30 November 2009: Galaxy-scale outflows of gas (“superwinds”) are a ubiquitous phenomenon in both starburst galaxies and those containing an active galactic nucleus but the contribution from dust and molecular gas is largely unknown. (Left) “Pure”, continuum-subtracted, H2 emission on a false-color scale. (Right) Two-color image of the H2 filaments (in red) extending more than 3 kpc above and below the plane of the galaxy (shown in blue).

3 November 2009: Image of H2 (red, from NEWFIRM, Kitt Peak National Observatory), and Hα (green, from the Hubble Space Telescope archive) of the Herbig Haro object HH 110. In a study to appear in Nov 10 2009 ApJ, Pat Hartigan and collaborators show how, under the right conditions, collimated supersonic jets in laboratory experiments provide a means to study their astrophysical counterparts.

12 October 2009: Two NOAO astronomers, Dr. Dara Norman and Dr. Stephen Pompea, at the White House Star Party on Wednesday, Oct 7. The event, attended by local middle school students, was designed to promote science literacy. Telescopes on the White House lawn were focused on Jupiter, the Moon and select stars; interactive dome presentations; and hands-on activities. Dara and Steve had the honor of meeting President Obama and his family, and showing them objects through their telescopes. Dara also shared SPECTRUM, the newsletter of the Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy. Steve demonstrated the Galileoscope, created for the International Year of Astronomy. This new, high-quality telescope kit for students enables kids to learn how to do science, making the same observations that Galileo made 400 years ago.