Stephen SekulaMeet MOTHRA, the thousand-eyed telescope in search of the cosmic web - The Globe and Mail https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/science/article-meet-mothra-the-thousand-eyed-telescope-in-search-of-the-cosmic-web/
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Daniel PomarèdeOn the cover of the new issue of Nature Astronomy: Elongated galaxies point to warm dark matter
Image: Álvaro Pozo, Donostia International Physics Center. Cover design: Bethany Vukomanovic
https://www.nature.com/natastron/volumes/10/issues/2
#Cosmology #galaxies #DarkMatter #physics #science #astrodon #nature #astronomy #news #astrophysics #simulation #cosmicweb
IRAPThe #CosmicWeb is made up of large #voids delimited by long filaments of #matter at the intersection of which vast #gravitational structures are formed: #galaxies grouped into clusters.
Do their properties (mass, shape, star formation rate) preserve traces of the large-scale cosmic flows from which they originated? Find out this Thursday with Katarina Kraljic, a researcher at the @ObsStrasbourg , who studied a sample of observed and virtual galaxies : https://www.irap.omp.eu/event/the-co-evolution-of-galaxies-and-the-cosmic-web-over-cosmic-time/
"Structures cosmiques : une famille de géantes"
I was yesterday on France Culture to talk about the discovery of the Quipu Supercluster and other large scale structures.
#Cosmology #Cosmography #Quipu #QuipuSupercluster #Laniakea #LaniakeaSupercluster #SouthPoleWall #SloanGreatWall #CosmicWeb #science #astrophysics #astronomy #astrodon #radio #podcast #FranceCulture #Radiofrance
Structures cosmiques : une famille de géantes
Comment Quipu, structure parmi les plus grandes, a-t-elle été identifiée ? De quoi sont composés les filaments de galaxies et de matière noire qui forment les structures de l'univers ? En quoi leur identification permet-elle de préciser notre compréhension de la cosmologie ?
In the DarkLick Observatory Damaged
I missed, until now, the news that on Christmas Day, high winds accompanying a violent storm seriously damaged the historic Lick Observatory.
The gales were strong enough to rip one of the shutters from the dome of the 36″ refracting telescope and send it crashing onto the roof of the adjacent building.
The Observatory remains closed to the public while the structural damage is assessed and repairs made. Fortunately it seems nobody was hurt and no instruments were affected.
Here’s a video of the detached shutter being removed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYooaiylVEg
The Lick Observatory is located on Mount Hamilton near San Jose in California. A donation by San Francisco millionaire James Lick enabled the construction of the 36” (diameter) refractor, the most powerful telescope in the world at the time. The Observatory was almost destroyed in 2020 by a wildfire, but the new incident is the most serious damage in its 137-year history.
As I blogged about here, the Lick Observatory played an important role in the development of our understanding of the large-scale structure of the Universe, specifically with the creation of the Lick galaxy survey prepared by Charles Donald Shane and Carl Alvar Wirtanen and published in 1967 (Publ. Lick. Observatory 22, Part 1). In my more poetic moments, the image on the left puts me in mind of W.B. Yeats: Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths.
That catalogue was still proving a useful resource well into the 1990s; I was part of various analyses of it myself, starting with this paper from 1991. It was eventually superceded by the arrival of large-scale galaxy redshift surveys, but it remaining an amazing achievement.
The Lick Galaxy survey was not performed with the 36″ refractor mentioned above, however, but by twin 20″ Carnegie astrographic telescopes housed in a different dome. As far as I know, these were not damaged in the storm.
AlcorNewsDes astronomes découvrent des dizaines de structures intergalactiques géantes autour de quasars — l’Univers plus complexe qu’on ne le pensait. https://www.techno-science.net/actualite/quasars-geants-decouverte-dizaines-structures-intergalactiques-N27939.html #Space #Astrophysics #Quasars #CosmicWeb
in the #arXiv
Dissecting the Perseus-Pisces supercluster observed with CFHT-MegaCam: Investigating environmental effects on galaxy morphology
by Maëlie Mondelin and co-authors
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.05925
#galaxies #cosmicweb #PerseusPisces #supercluster #astronomy #astrophysics #astrodon #science #CFHT #Megacam #cosmology
in the #arXiv
Numerical Cosmology
by Romain Teyssier
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13129
#Cosmology #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon #DarkMatter #CosmicWeb #galaxies #science
jolteon8113 at KillBaitAncient Magnetic Fields in the Universe Were Surprisingly Weak, Comparable to Human Brain Activity
New simulations have revealed that the universe's first magnetic fields, formed shortly after the Big Bang, were much weaker than scientists initially thought. These primordial fields were only about one-billionth the strength of a standard fridge magnet, comparable to the magnetic activity found in... [More info]
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