Posts tagged data
CU joins Sloan Digital Sky Survey to map stars, galaxies and quasars in 3D
Jun 26th
The survey, known as SDSS-IV, is the fourth stage of an effort that began with SDSS-I in 2000 to create the largest digital color image of the northern sky, said CU-Boulder Professor Michael Shull of the astrophysical and planetary sciences department, lead scientist in the effort by CU-Boulder to join the survey. Since 2000, astronomers have mapped about one-half of the visible northern sky in three dimensions as part of the three prior Sloan sky surveys, discovering nearly half a billion astronomical objects ranging from asteroids and stars to galaxies and distant quasars in the process.
“We got into this because we think it is going to be a great recruitment tool for new students, and we have one of the best undergraduate majors in the country,” Shull said. “We also want to recruit high-caliber graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.”
The SDSS 2.5-meter telescope is located at the Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, N.M., and is owned by the Astrophysical Research Consortium, or ARC, an organization of eight research institutions including CU-Boulder. The Sloan telescope sky-mapping project is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the participating institutions, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Apache Point also hosts several other telescopes, including a 3.5-meter optical telescope owned and operated by ARC and routinely used by CU-Boulder.
ARC was formed in 1984 to create a national observatory that could provide telescope time to each member university based on its investment. Current ARC members in addition to CU-Boulder are the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., the University of Washington, the University of Virginia and New Mexico State University. CU-Boulder owns a one-eighth share of each of the two telescopes.
The costs to build new instruments, make observations and analyze data from the SDSS-IV from 2014 to 2020 is estimated to be between $50 million and $60 million, said Shull. The Sloan Foundation is contributing roughly $10 million, while additional funds are coming from more than 10 full institutional members, including CU, and from scientists with individual and small group memberships from various institutions.
Full institutional partners like CU-Boulder are paying roughly $1 million to join part four of the Sloan sky survey effort. CU-Boulder’s member fee was supported by university grants, awards, donations, general funds and indirect cost recovery savings. As an early institutional partner joining the Sloan IV survey before the end of the current fiscal year, CU received a $350,000 discount from ARC, said Shull.
Light from the Sloan telescope is directed to two powerful new instruments — a dual-channel visible light, or optical spectrograph, and a near-infrared spectrograph. Astronomical spectrographs break light into telltale colors much like a prism, revealing information about the size, temperature, composition and motion of celestial objects, said Shull.
The Sloan spectrographs will carry out a massive survey of galaxies and quasars in the distant universe, as well as stars in the Milky Way and thousands of nearby galaxies, said Shull, who also is a member of CU-Boulder’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy.
The new optical spectrograph on the Sloan telescope can take data from up to 1,000 galaxies or quasars simultaneously, he said. The instrument includes a circular aluminum plate roughly the size of a large pizza pan with 1,000 small perforations precisely drilled to match up with known astronomical objects in the sky. Each hole is plugged with an optical fiber attached to the spectrograph.
“I think this is going to be a perfect way for undergraduates to get their hands dirty working with ‘big data,’ said Shull. “A lot of undergraduates are better at computers than we are, so hiring a freshman or a sophomore who really wants to get into computing and big data sets in the field of astronomy is one of our goals.”
One of the biggest discoveries by SDSS-III astronomers came in 2012 when they detected the predicted signature of the first sound waves from matter and radiation in the early universe, said Shull. Sloan researchers used a multi-fiber spectrograph as part of the Baryon Oscillation Sky Survey, or BOSS, to detect the large-scale structures of ancient galaxies — similar in some ways to ripples on a pond — that were preserved after the Big Bang.
Shull, who plans to use the multi-fiber spectrograph to hunt for distant quasars in the early universe going back 13 million years, said the BOSS effort also is expected to reveal new information about so-called “dark energy.” A hypothetical form of energy that makes up the majority of the universe and produces a force that opposes gravity, dark energy is thought to be the cause of the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Another SDSS-IV effort will be a sky survey in the infrared to probe the distribution, dynamics and chemistry of stars and to explore the formation of our Milky Way Galaxy and its two companion galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, said Shull. Since the two Magellanic Clouds are best viewed from the southern hemisphere, SDSS scientists plan to collaborate with astronomers who are using the 2.5 meter du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas, Chile, on the effort.
SDSS-IV astronomers also will be using the BOSS instrument to study the internal structure of 10,000 nearby galaxies. The data will include precise velocities of stellar motions and chemical abundances for a large range of galaxy masses, types and environments. The data will complement observations of two newly completed American telescopes: the ALMA millimeter and submillimeter array radio telescope in Chile and the Expanded-Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico.
SDSS-IV also has had a significant citizen science component since 2007, when a data set of a million galaxies was released to the public, who were asked to classify them in three categories: Elliptical galaxies, merging galaxies and spiral galaxies, including the direction of the spiral arms. An astounding 70,000 classifications were received by SDSS scientists from the public within an hour of the data release, and during the first year more than 150,000 people made more than 50 million galaxy classifications.
CU has a legacy in space dating back nearly 70 years, said CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Research Stein Sture. It is the top funded public university by NASA, has a $70 million instrument now flying on the Hubble Space Telescope, is leading a $485 million mission to Mars and controls four NASA satellites from campus.
A video news story on the project is available at http://youtu.be/1Rke59L5cAo.
-CU-
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Oil and gas exploration (fracking) moratorium till health studies in
Jun 18th
Citing a changing regulatory environment and the need for more public health studies to assess the health impacts of oil and gas development, the County Commissioners voted unanimously to extend the moratorium until the end of 2014
Boulder County, Colo. – By unanimous decision, the Board of County Commissioners today voted to extend the temporary moratorium on oil and gas development in unincorporated Boulder County for 18 months to expire at the end of 2014.
Citing the need for further health and safety studies to test the impacts of oil and gas development on air and water quality, the commissioners stated that the county is not yet prepared – in terms of inspection and monitoring staff, health data, baseline testing and technical expertise – to process new applications for oil and gas development in unincorporated Boulder County.
The commissioners also noted that with a dynamic regulatory environment around the issue, new rulemaking could affect how the county regulates oil and gas under its own authority in the future.
“We are living in a regulatory environment where regulations and rules are changing rapidly,” said County Commissioner Deb Gardner. “A short delay in extraction is legal, necessary and appropriate when balanced against our fundamental duty as elected officials to protect public health, safety, welfare and the environment from potential adverse impacts of oil and gas exploration and development, and to minimize potential land use conflicts between those activities and current or planned land uses.”
Gardner’s sentiments were supported and confirmed by her fellow commissioners, Cindy Domenico and Elise Jones.
Extensive feedback on the moratorium was received from members of the public over a period of 16 months from February 2012 to the present. Over 1,100 comments were submitted this week alone by the time of the June 18 public hearing, all but about a dozen of which stated a preference for extending the moratorium.
In general, public comments have overwhelmingly supported extending the moratorium to assess health and safety impacts of oil and gas drilling to area residents. In addition, on June 5th the Boulder County Planning Commission, by a vote of 7-0, recommended that the Board of County Commissioners extend the current temporary moratorium.
Today’s public hearing also included a decision to table indefinitely Docket DC-12-0003 “Proposed Amendments to Article 12 of the Boulder County Land Use Code (oil and gas regulations), to include a phasing plan.” With the extended temporary moratorium in place, Land Use staff will to continue to work on developing an inspection and implementation plan for permitting oil and gas applications.
A taped archive of the hearing is available at: www.bouldercounty.org/gov/meetings/pages/hearings.aspx.
For more information about the county’s role in oil and gas development, please visit the county’s Oil and Gas Development webpage.
City/county recognizes top 5 energy saving businesses
Jun 12th
The City of Boulder and Boulder County will recognize five local businesses for their outstanding achievement in the EnergySmart program at today’s Boulder Earth Conference. Mayor Matt Appelbaum and County Commissioner Elise Jones will present recognition certificates at the reception, scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at the Boulder Theater, located at 2032 14th St.
“These local businesses are leaders among commercial participants in the EnergySmart program and have achieved the greatest potential energy savings during the past year,” said City of Boulder Business Sustainability Coordinator Elizabeth Vasatka. “Collectively, these businesses are now saving enough energy each year to power approximately 490 Boulder County homes.”
The five businesses to be recognized include:
- The W.W. Reynolds Companies, a leading real estate services company located in Boulder that specializes in property management, leasing and development.
- Hover Senior Living Community, a thriving, forward thinking, caring community located in Longmont, where all are served with integrity and respect.
- Tebo Development Company, a leading commercial real estate owner and developer that offers a wide range of retail, office and industrial space throughout Boulder County.
- WaterStreet Plaza, managed by Gibbons-White, Inc., a group of multi-tenant buildings located in Boulder, with rental units on the ground floor and office suites on the upper three floors.
- SAE Circuits Colorado Incorporated, a manufacturer of quality printed circuit boards located in Boulder that services customers with diverse applications and locations.
Through personalized advising services, EnergySmart helps homes and businesses in all Boulder County communities become more comfortable and energy efficient. Several of the businesses recognized indicated that having knowledgeable advisors by their side helped make the process easier.
- “Working with EnergySmart has been an enjoyable, dream come true. Knowledgeable staff led us to sound energy efficient solutions for all our renovation questions.” — Dan Wagner of Hover Senior Living Community
- “They make our choices clear, provide back-up data, and allow us to complete energy efficient upgrades to our buildings which otherwise would be difficult to coordinate. We are now able to move forward with many additional projects, keeping energy efficiency in mind.” — James Dixon of Tebo Development.
Since 2011, EnergySmart has served more than 2,600 local businesses and issued nearly $1.7 million in rebates to businesses and commercial property owners “We’re thrilled that businesses have invested a total of $8 million to date in energy efficiency retrofits, contributing to local energy and cost savings and supporting vibrant communities throughout Boulder County,” said Susie Strife, Boulder County Sustainability Coordinator.
Developed by Boulder County Business Report and BizWest Media, and co-sponsored by the City of Boulder and Boulder County, this year’s Boulder Earth Conference is convening business, government, political leaders and communities from across Colorado and the world to share knowledge, ideas, and technologies that advance sustainable business practices. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will deliver this year’s keynote address.
EnergySmart provides a full suite of services to help businesses and homes in all Boulder County communities identify valuable energy-saving opportunities and assist them through the energy upgrade process. For more information, call an Energy Advisor at 303-441-1300 (for business) or 303-544-1000 (for home), or visitwww.EnergySmartYES.com. For more information about the Boulder Earth Conference, visitwww.boulderearth.com.
Boulder press release
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