The DiRAC Institute
@uwdirac
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Seeking a universe understood through data-intensive discovery.
Seattle, WA
Joined July 2017
Excited for tomorrow's AoT talk and want to hear more astronomy? Well, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is releasing its first images NEXT WEEK! Join UW Astronomy at Kane Hall on June 26 for this FREE lecture to find out more! You can register here: https://t.co/u7iIYPnNpz
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Here we go: Lagoon (M8) and Trifid (M20) nebulae in their full @VRubinObs-delivered glory. These are active star-forming regions in the constellation of Sagittarius constellation, rich in gas and dust, some 4,000–5,000 light-years away. You're looking at new stars being born.
A cosmic glimpse of the unprecedented visuals to come today at 11 a.m. EDT from the NSF-DOE @VRubinObs. Be sure to tune in, you won't want to miss this: https://t.co/jMIGcSjS7n. 📸: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory #CaptureTheCosmos #RubinFirstLook
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Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by @NSF–@doescience Vera C. Rubin Observatory! Can you guess what regions of sky they are? This is just a peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! https://t.co/1a74X2edp8
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🚨 Rubin First Look: a small section of the large map of the Virgo Cluster. Look at the NGC 4410/11 interacting galaxies near the top right. Join the press conference live-stream tomorrow morning to see the full view (link in thread).
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🚨: Millions of solar system objects to be found in the next few years It took over two centuries to discover the ~1.5 million asteroids and comets we know today. The @VRubinObs will double that in less than two years. See the 🧵 for the studies we just published👇
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🚨Two nights ago @VRubinObs, the largest sky survey system in the world, took its first image. Absolutely gorgeous 🤩🤩. By last night it had sub-arcsec image quality across most of the 10deg^2 focal plane 🤯. Congratulations to 100s of ppl working 20+ years for this moment!!
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📣📣 Happy to share movies of two asteroids moving through @VRubinObs ComCam field during our commissioning run this fall. These are previously-known asteroids, J95S71P and K02F06B, seen in ComCam data on November 26th, 2024. K02F06B is a non-hazardous Near Earth Object (NEO)
Yes!!! The first public image from @VRubinObs Simonyi Survey Telescope (just the fun pixels 😉). Now ponder getting 21x this, every ~40 seconds, ~8hrs/night, for 10 years. That's what's coming by the end of this year.
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I realized I never posted that @VRubinObs published the first report on commissioning camera on-sky observations. See 🧵 for some figures (and link).
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The UW Astrobiology program will be hosting a public lecture series to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the program in April 2025! Registration is FREE but required for both in person & zoom attendance. RSVP & Speaker Info: https://t.co/JV9fUMZw4r
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Excited to announce that @jradavenport has accepted the offer to become the third director of @uwdirac! Jim and I will continue as co-directors until my term ends at the end of this academic year. It's been an honor to serve this way over the last 5 years. Congratulations Jim!
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New paper on arXiv! This paper concludes our outer Solar System efforts with the Dark Energy Survey. Long thread, because this is a ridiculously long paper. Paper link:
arxiv.org
For the 696 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with absolute magnitudes $5.5 < H_r < 8.2$ detected in the Dark Energy Survey (DES), we characterize the relationships between their dynamical state and...
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Happy holidays folks! The AOT Seattle team has been dreaming up new ways to bring the show to Seattle and beyond.. but we need your help! If you are in a giving spirit, please consider supporting the Friends of Astronomy Fund! https://t.co/IJEKBKBA7g
together.uw.edu
We're working to make Astronomy on Tap even better, with a tech refresh and new programs that are out of this world!
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And here's where the first @VRubinObs image is on the sky: (with h/t to Dustin & the brilliant folks behind astrometry-dot-net).
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Yes!!! The first public image from @VRubinObs Simonyi Survey Telescope (just the fun pixels 😉). Now ponder getting 21x this, every ~40 seconds, ~8hrs/night, for 10 years. That's what's coming by the end of this year.
When you turn it on and it works spectacularly! The Rubin team has successfully completed the first on-sky engineering tests using the 144-megapixel engineering camera, ComCam! Up next: installing the largest digital camera in the world, LSST Camera. 🔗: https://t.co/HPCmGkluFL
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A good article on whether there's a 9th planet in the Solar System and if @VRubinObs could soon find it. Checks in with all the main characters including @plutokiller @kbatygin Chad Trujillo @megschwamb @phbernardinelli, etc. Well researched & written (@SquigglyVolcano FTW).
NEW: Does Planet 9 exist? No telescope has been capable of finding it—but in 2025, the Rubin Observatory will come online, and with its remarkable eye, it will find out, once and for all, if the elusive world is truly there. My cover story for @sciam:
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Live in Seattle, hang out with sci & tech people, drink coffee, science the crap out of early @VRubinObs data, become famous. Three years of funding to do something big. Designed for the ambitious. Retweet & tell your friends (or students/postdocs). Application link in reply.
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. @VRubinObs commissioning update #2: Major achievement unlocked – first sub-1" resolution images acquired 🎉. 1" (one "arcsecond") is the size of a quarter as seen from 3 miles away (for our 🇪🇺 friends: a 2€ coin at 5km). While imaging at <1" resolution is not unusual for
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Hey all -- want to spend an evening with your friendly neighborhood astronomers? I'll be giving a planetarium talk at @uwastronomy on December 4th, about how we'll use @VRubinObs and AI to map and understand the visible Universe. Come & tell your friends! (link in thread)
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Hey that's Max & Colin (@ActiveAsteroids) from @uwdirac 🎉!
Cometary Activity from Minor Planet 2015 VP51 Discovered with Citizen Science-
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