Visiting LIGO (Livingston)

The plan to visit LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) @Livingston started back in August 2023. At that time it was decided to both visit the states Texas and Louisiana in view of the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. I made contact with the LIGO center and after a couple of emails it was confirmed we could visit the center on friday april 19, 2024 at 2pm.

 

A great welcome by Mishael Sedas, a PhD who leads the Science Center as Evaluator & Educator. He explained the history of the site and provided details on the LIGO instrument. As we were the only visitors on site, Mishael took the time to answer all of our questions and we got a detailed plant tour. He was impressed that we also visited Virgo in Cascina (see link to my blogpost); beside some scientists he could not recall anybody who visited two gravitational detectors. 

A great thx to the Livingston team and Mishael for getting into LIGO.

Each arm of the detector is 4km long.

We visited the control center of the detector which was operational. As from April 10, 2024 they are in operational run 04b.

Selfie with Mishael Sedas

Of course... the Nobel Prize for the detection of gravitational waves. 

Th"mirmor" is reflective for the IR laserbeams, but transparant for visual light. 

The "old" mirror; the design is different then the one we saw at Virgo.

Succesvol VVS Weekend 7/8 oktober 2023 Blankenberge

Opnieuw een succesvol VVS weekend dat doorging op 7 & 8 oktober te Blankenberge. Helios was aanwezig met 7 leden, een record. 

Enkele hoogtepunten :

* Professor dr. Harold Linnartz sprak over ijs in de ruimte en in het laboratorium met het doel op zoek te gaan naar de bouwstenen van het leven. De vorming van moleculen gebeurt in de interactielaag tussen stof en ijs. Dit Solid State Astrochemistry proces beschrijft hoe moleculen worden gevormd. Er is een broos evenwicht tussen de vorming van het ijs en het afbreken van het ijs. Denk maar aan het permanent bombarderen en afbreken van het ijs door electronen, UV-, IR-licht of kosmische straling  en anderzijds de extreem koude omstandigheden die het ijs laten aangroeien

* Professor dr. Nick Van Remortel sprak over de Einstein-telescoop. Hij gaf meer technisch inzicht over het project dat ons moet toelaten zwaartekrachtsgolven te detecteren met een gevoeligheid die 10x hoger ligt dan de huidige LIGO of Virgo.

*Professor dr. Nienke van der Marel gaf toelichting bij het bouwen van planeten. Zij besprak resultaten van de ALMA telescoop over de afbeeldingen van schijven en de eerste tekenen van planeetvorming. Zij ontving recent de New Horizons in Physics Prize 2024 voor de voorspelling, ontdekking en modellering van ‘stofvallen’ in jonge circumstellaire schijven, waarmee een al lang bestaand probleem in planeetvorming is opgelost.

Ik wil ook nog de interessante lezingen vermelden van Thierry Van Driessche (komeet C/2023 A3), Wout Goesaert (op zoek naar actief supermassief zwarte gaten),  Merline Bruyndonckx (Fast Burst en hun astronomisch nut), Koen Geukens (Artemis en Space X) en Claude Doom over 50 jaar hemelkalender.

Helios delegatie in volle glorie ...

Lecture on Einstein Telescope UHasselt

Together with my collegue Walter and 400 others, we attended a lecture on the Einstein Telescope (ET) at UHasselt. The lecture was organized by EOS, UHasselt and FWO. Information about the ET was provided by Prof. Alexander Sevrin (VUBrussels) and Prof. Nick Van Remortel (UAntwerpen). The debat was lead by Flanders ET projectleader Hans Plets.

Selfie with Prof. Alexander Sevrin (VUBrussels)

The Einstein Telescope is an advanced gravitational-wave observatory, currently in the planning stage. The border region of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, known as the Euregio Meusse-Rhine, is an ideal location. This is because of its tranquillity, stable ground and strong ecosystem of scientific institutions and high-tech companies.

For more information see the offical website of the Einstein Telescope 

The Einstein Telescope will be more sensitive then the current LIGO, VIRGO or KAGRA and will be the most sensitive instrument ever build. Some key differences that will boost sensitivity :

- the observatory will be build 200-300m underground to prevent any "noise and vibrations"

- the whole system will have a length of 10km (triangle shape) which is be much bigger then LIGO(4km) or VIRGO and KARGO both 3km

- the mirrors will be fully cooled up to -200°C and made of crystalline Silicon which will reflect the infrared laserbeams. 

Lecture Black Holes and The BlackGEM telescope Array

Today I attended a lecture on black holes via Radboud Unuiversity and provided by Prof. Dr. Peter Jonker, who is also the Project Scientist of BlackGEM (see below). The lecture started with a good overview of the special and general relativity theory in order to explain the concept of a black hole. A couple of things I will be remembering:

- nothing is moving faster then light (speed of light); when reading this different, nothing or an empty space can move faster then light.
- Accretion onto a black hole is the most efficient process for emitting energy from matter in the Universe, releasing up to 40% of the rest mass energy of the material falling in. As a comparison, nuclear fision and fusion convert mass into energy by 0.08% & 0.7%

- when a star has a mass so large that the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, it's called a dark star according newtonian laws; the same dark star is described as a "hole" when applying general relativity by introducing space-time curvature.

BlackGEM is a wide-field telescope array, located ar ESA La Silla Chile, dedicated to measure the optical emission from pairs of merging neutron stars and black holes. BlackGEM will be triggered by the Advanced LIGO & Virgo gravitational wave detectors. ic.

BlackGEM will start with 3 telescopes each 65cm diameter, and each equipped with a 110 Mpix camera, consisting of a single 10.5k x 10.5k CCD sampling the sky at 0.56 ”/pix.

My astronomical Highlights 2022

An interesting astronomical year "2022" with some amazing "wow" moments and again great learnings. I had to limit the list but these are my astronomical highlights:

#1 Visiting European Gravitational Observatory (Virgo) at Cascina (Italy); thx to my family

#2 A real interessing session and meeting Heino Falcke together with my collegue Walter 

#3 My best picture of Mars using IR/UV blocker 

#4 Solar Image with a detailed prominance

#5 Jupiter with Moon Io

Worth mentioning:

#6 Solar Image with Ellerman Bombs

#7 My first astroweekend @Berzieux (France) a making friends with Adriano

#8 Solar Image with full disk of the H-Alpha Sun 

#9 Meridian Line @Bologna (Italy) thx to collegue Patrick W

#10 Saturn at opposition

Visiting Virgo (EGO) Cascina

Today I (together with my Family) visited the Virgo center (European Gravitational Observatory) at Cascina near Pisa in Italy. The road for the last 2km were terible and my car was almost damaged!

The tour started with only 5 of us and later on 2 more Polish people joined. The presentation at the seminar room was clear and to the point. Next we visited the main building office and getting more in depth technical information about the mirrors (these look like glass but do reflect the infrared laser light), the vacuumsystem, the michelson interfermeter, the pendulum system (7 pieces),…

Thereafter we could get into the tube system (which is 3km in total and another 3km for the other one which is 90' oriented). In side the main building we could see the laser, the laserrecuperation system, the beamsplitter, the mirror to resend the laserbeam up to 100times back and forth before getting back into the splitter and to the detector.

The Virgo detector is currently upgraded and to be commissioned and should be ready next spring. Currently Virgo detected more the 80 gravitational waves and typical one per week. With the upgrade expectations are to record gravitational waves on a daily base.

Thx to the Virgo team to share the information and showing us the location in detail.

NGC5566 (ARP286)

A trio galaxy in Virgo : NGC5560, 5566 and 5569 all at a distance of 65 million ly away from Earth. The trio is also known as ARP286

Setting : Nikon D7500 with TAL200K f/8.5. ISO400, exposure time 60x60s with darks, flats, darkflats and bias. Stacking using APP and final editing with CS4.

Siamese Twins or Butterfly Galaxy

NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 are part of the Butterfly Galaxy or also known as the Siamese Twins. Both galaxies are located in constellation Virgo and about 60 million light years away from Earth. Together with NGC 4564 (55 million light years from Earth) they are all part of the Virgo Cluster.

Picture taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting ISO6400 and 10x60s exposure time. Stacking with DeepSkyStacker and final editing using CS4.

Picture uploaded in Astrometry - see results.

Galaxy NGC 4526 or NGC 4560

Galaxy NGC 4526 (also listed as NGC 4560 - see astrometry) is located in constellation Virgo and is part of the Virgo Cluster and about 55 million light years away from Earth. 

Picture taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting ISO6400 and 16 minutes exposure time (16x60s). Stacking using DeepSkyStacker and final editing with CS4.

Galaxies NGC 4550 & 4551 - Clockwise / Counterclockwise movement

Galaxy NGC 4550 is located in constellation Virgo and is part of the Virgo Cluster, about 50 million light years away from Earth. An interesting fact is that NGC 4550 has stars which move counterclockwise and another part of the stars move clockwise.

Picture taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting ISO6400 and 10x60s. Stacking using DeepSkyStacker and final editing with CS4. 

Galaxy NGC 4535

Galaxy NGC 4535 is located in constellation Virgo and part of the Virgo Cluster and about 54 million light years away from Earth. 

Picture taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting ISO6400 and 15x60s. Stacking with DeepSkyStacker and final editing using CS4.

Supernova SN2020jfo in Galaxy M61

A Supernova SN2020 jfo is found in Galaxy M61. This galaxy M61 is located in constellation Virgo and about 52 million light years away from Earth. Galaxy M61 part of the Virgo Cluster and is one of the largest members of the Cluster. 

The supernova SN2020 jfo is a type 2 nova. Type II supernovae like 2020jfo involve the sudden and violent collapse of a supergiant star when its nuclear fuel gas tank hits empty. With no heat and pressure in the core to battle back the crushing hand of gravity, the star implodes. The infall rebounds at the core, creating a shock wave of such ferocity that it rips through the star and blows it to bits in a titanic explosion 100 million times brighter than the Sun. No wonder we can see these things in our backyard telescopes (source Sky & Telescope)!


Picture was taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting ISO6400 and 31x60s. Stacking with DeepSkyStacker and final editing in CS4.

Galaxies NGC 4762 and NGC 4754 - Use of PAE

Both galaxies NGC 4762 and NGC 4754 are located in constellation Virgo and both are part of the Virgo Cluster. NGC 4762 is located at a distance of 60 million lightyears from Earth; NGC 4754 about 53 million light years.

Setting: Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5, ISO3200 and 46x60s exposure time. Stacking using DeepSkyStacker and final editing using CS4.

The equatorial mount and Synscan v4 was connected to my PC and Stellarium software. After 3 star allignment the mount was set to a nearby star and again corrected via PAE, Point Accurancy Enhancement.  The nearby star was centered and via menu Utililty, PAE corrected. This was a great help to located the galaxies.

An amazing 4,56 billion light years away!

With Stephan's Quintet I was able to look at an object which is about 210-340 million light years away from Earth? The question at that time : can I see further?

I knew the existance of Quasars but I never thought I could see them with my own telescoop. I found an interesting and very recent article on Sky&Telescoop : Twinkle, Twinkle, Quasi-Star - 12 Quasars for Spring evenings - see this link.

After reading the article I was convinced that I at least should try to find some of the mentioned Quasars. As described, a Quasar, or Quasi-Stellar Object (QSO) is seen as a star but in reality it is a galaxy with a huge black hole at the center. The black hole can have a mass, billions of time more then our sun and outshines it's own galaxy. 

The first Quasar discoverd is 3C 273 located in constellation Virgo. With a magnitude of 12,9 it should be possible to find it with my 8" telescoop. First I enabled the QSO objects in stellarium and I made sure the telescope was perfectly alligned. A bahtinov mask was used to get real sharp pictures. Images were taken and compared with the charts from the article in S&T. And yes, there it was....... 3C 273 located at a distance of 2.5 billion light years away from Earth. And this from my own backgarden, amazing!

Next to Virgo is constellation Leo with Quasar PG1116+215. More difficult to find and after editing I verified my observation using the Simbad Astronomical database. This Quasar PG 1116+215 is about 2,3 billion light years away from Earth.

Next I started searching for Quasar HS 0624+6907 in constellation Camelopardalis. It took me a lot of time and effort to find this Quasor. Finaly, after 180° rotating the image I could spot the Quasar HS 0624+6907 as a very weak "star" with magnitude 14. This Quasar is located at a distance of 4,56 billion light years away from Earth.

To conclude, It's possible to see Quasars yourself using an 8" telescoop and knowing you see objects at a distance of 4,56 billion light years away. Try this at home :)

All pictures taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL 200K/f/8.5. Setting ISO6400 and exposure of 60s each. Stacking with DeepSkyStacker and final editing in CS4. The mount was connected to Stellarium and the camera controlled by DigiCamControl.