*La SILLA*
At 0.9-1.4" seeing last night was good but not great.
At the 2.2-m we did mostly WFI: observations of the Hubble Deep Field South for astronomers from Universidad de Chile, and pre-imaging of a cluster of galaxies for astronomers of Universidad Catolica de Chile. Tonight we will continue with service observing.
It was the last night for our NTT observers. They have discovered 23
supernovae of type Ia, 3 type II, and also obtained 22 host galaxy
spectra. All these data will be used to refine our knowledge of
correlations between galaxy type and supernova properties and at the
same time refine
the determination of cosmological parameters. Tonight a new program at
the NTT will search for stellar remnants in the solar neighbourhood.
According to Paula Zelaya, student from Universidad Catolica de Chile observing at the 3.6, they are obtaining "images and spectra of binary quasars detected by the SDSS survey. The simplest goal is to determine spectroscopic redshifts of these pairs and the most interesting goal is to test whether binary QSO's are tracers of high density zones or not. For these purposes we will do photometry on the neighbourhood and examine the QSO's spectra, particularly the Lyman-alpha forest which is related to higher density zones."
*PARANAL*
Tonight, all telescopes (UTs and ATs) will be operated in Service Mode.
On VIMOS on UT3, one of the programs likely to be executed aims at
~nearby galaxies, in order to study the giant black holes at their
center. High resolution images were obtained with the space telescope,
and with VIMOS, we will get complemeting spectra. From the spectra, the
velocity of the stars near the center of the galaxy can be measured, and
from this, the mass of the giant black hole is estimated.
/
- the Shift Leaders/
Received on 2006-09-17Z21:23:32