Eyes Full Of Stars

At the end of April, the European Southern Observatory culminated a multi-year site selection process for construction of the world’s largest telescope. Known as the E-ELT for the European Extremely Large Telescope, it will have a primary mirror spanning 138 feet. That size is more than four times larger than the biggest single-aperture telescope operating today. On the short list of candidate sites were four locations in Chile and one in the Canary Islands, Spain.

Here is a link to my weekly column in the Santa Fe New Mexican. This week’s topic is about Earth Day, of course.

Night Sky column

Voyager 1 image of Earth

Click on pen to

I was heartened to see the signatures of Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan and Jim Lovell attached to a letter challenging the US leadership to step-up a plan to enable continued activity both in low earth orbit and beyond. If you haven’t read it already, here is a complete copy:

The United States entered into the challenge of space exploration under President Eisenhower’s first term, however, it was the Soviet Union who excelled in those early years. Under the bold vision of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and with the overwhelming approval of the American people, we rapidly closed the gap in the final third of the 20th century, and became the world leader in space exploration.

Leaping across the sky as March gives way to April, we find the constellation Lepus, the hare. Like the animal it represents, Lepus lies still and inconspicuous below Orion’s feet poised to escape if detected by the hunter’s dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor. Lepus hosts a couple of interesting deep sky objects – the globular cluster M79 and Hind’s Crimson Star.