Melbourne-based researcher Lingam K. working to raise awareness about Nepal's melting glaciers

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Melbourne-based researcher Lingam K. working to raise awareness about Nepal's melting glaciers
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2 hours ago

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First images from Vera C. Rubin Observatory released, giving a taste of what's to come

A stunning nebula and a sky dotted full of bright stars and dancing galaxies are in the first set of three images released by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The ground-based telescope, which uses the world's largest digital camera, promises to revolutionise entire fields of astronomy with its wide angle and powerful lens. The images are a taster of what is expected to be unveiled at 1AM AEST Tuesday morning in a live stream that will also include ultra-high definition video. According to astronomers, even these first previews are unlike anything they've ever seen before. Rachel Webster, an astrophysicist at the University of Mebourne, said she was stunned by the vast scale of each picture. One of Rubin's early pictures is of the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas, two huge regions of interstellar gas some 5,200 and 9,000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius. The image is a composite built from 678 different pictures, captured over a seven-hour period. Jonti Horner, astrophysicist at the University of Southern Queensland, said the nebulas are one of the "jewels of the night sky" that amateur astronomers often turn their telescopes towards. Professor Horner said that the detail was "breathtaking". While other big space telescopes can achieve this level of detail, Professor Webster said they can't do it with the wide angle Rubin enjoys. "Here, we've got the depth of a big telescope with a very big field of view, and that's very exciting." Professor Webster said that the colours can tell astronomers about the physical processes happening in the nebulas. Pink, for instance, indicates a lot of hydrogen. "There's lots of stars in the pink areas and those are hot young stars," Professor Webster said. But what sets Rubin's imagery apart is the orange regions around the nebulas. Professor Webster said the orange likely indicates dust — but she's not seen an image like it before. "This is not surprising, but you don't normally see this large scale." The other two pictures Rubin has released both look beyond our galaxy to the Virgo Cluster. This is a group of galaxies 55 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. The entire group spans about 8 degrees across the sky, making it too wide for most high-power telescopes to snap in one image. But, as Swinburne University astrophysicist Tania Barone pointed out, Rubin is designed to see the whole thing in detail. Part of this important context is the way the galaxies interact with one another, connected by faintly glowing strings of stars. "Often when you look at images that don't go quite as deep, all the galaxies look isolated," Dr Barone said. "It's only when you get this really beautiful deep imaging that you see the trails and connections between them and the way that they're merging." One Rubin image shows three merging galaxies in a corner, with clear connections in between each. "We're seeing this cosmic dance in motion as they intertwine and merge," Dr Barone said. While the bright stars with their telltale points and the swirling galaxies might draw the most attention, it's the indistinct, pale smudges that Dr Webster is excited by. Some of these smudges might be faint Milky Way objects, while others could be unusual galaxies without bright, massive centres. "For a long time people have speculated on crouching giants, which are amorphous collections of stars that don't have big nuclei in them," Dr Webster said. There are also features in the images she can't immediately identify — such as a cluster of three galaxies to the left of the image. "I just look at it and I think: what on Earth is going on there?" Dr Webster said. "I've never seen a galaxy that looks like that before." The official unveiling happens at 1am (AEST) this Tuesday, June 24. If you are keen, you can watch the unveiling live on the telescope's website or rug up and go to a watch party in Melbourne, Sydney or Perth. The Rubin Observatory, which is run by the US but based in Chile, will take photographs of the night sky every few seconds for the next 10 years. With its 8.4 metre mirror and 3,000kg camera, the observatory will be able to document the entire night sky every few days. This means it will be able to spot very subtle changes happening quickly — opening up new fields of research into astrophysics and dark matter. "We're going to get these really nice, beautiful, clear images of the whole southern sky," Dr Barone said. But it will also be useful for finding things much closer, like asteroids and Solar System objects. The observatory is set to start its 10-year survey later this year, but astronomers are expecting exciting results from it straightaway. "Within the first 12 months, there'll be some super results," Professor Webster said. They're also not expecting its job to be done after its initial decade. "If I'm still talking to journalists in 20 years time, we'll still be talking about Vera Rubin," Professor Horner said. "It'll still be delivering new results, even then."

ABC News

8 hours ago

• ABC News

Lab-grown meat on the menu in Aussie restaurants

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ABC News

2 days ago

• ABC News

Antarctic clouds and pristine air hold clues to climate model blind spots

From the deck of an enormous research ship, surrounded by icebergs, Chelsea Bekemeier releases a tethered balloon into the air. She's standing in temperatures well below freezing, stationed deep in the Southern Ocean, just off East Antarctica. It's about as far from civilisation as you can get. The closest city, Hobart, is 5,000 kilometres away. But for scientists like Ms Bekemeier, this remote part of the world represents a treasure trove. The Southern Ocean is known as the "engine room" for global weather and climate, yet it remains a big blind spot for climate data. Scientists from around the world are making the mammoth journey to this end of the Earth to try and fill in crucial gaps in knowledge and improve global climate and weather models. The journey, which she returned from last month, is not for the faint-hearted. It took Ms Bekemeier — who is based at Colorado State University — three flights spanning more than 24 hours just to get to Hobart. It is then another week of travel on board the Australian Antarctic Division's RSV Nuyina to reach Denman Glacier, one of the largest glaciers in East Antarctica. She spent nine weeks on board the massive icebreaker, specially designed to break through the ice and huge swells. The remote location and harsh environment are the very reasons research has been so limited in this part of the globe, especially in the lead-up to winter. "I was very nervous," Ms Bekemeier said. "They made it very clear to us after a year of medical testing, psychological testing, jumping through hoops, that you are in a remote region on a boat. "If you need help, we have two doctors, but you really cannot get out. "It takes a week if you're in good condition to get back to land." The scientists on board the research vessel were investigating a range of important subjects — from marine life to sea floor mapping and recent rapid ice loss. But for Ms Bekemeier, a climate scientist, it was all about the clouds. The balloon the researchers released was fitted with sensors to capture data from the inside of these clouds. Clouds are a crucial aspect of the Earth's climate system, acting to cool and warm it by reflecting sunlight and trapping heat, like a blanket. "Clouds are constantly doing this job of balancing the incoming sunlight," she said. "You can see that when you go outside on a hot day and the clouds roll in, and the temperature drops pretty rapidly. "Then at night, if it's really overcast, it actually feels warmer because at night they insulate the planet." Yet clouds are also the biggest source of uncertainty for scientists projecting climate change, particularly "mixed phase" clouds, which contain both ice and water. It's this type of cloud that Ms Bekemeier is trying to better understand. "The Southern Ocean is the cloudiest region on the planet," she said. Currently, climate models struggle to represent the ratio of ice to water inside the clouds over this region — something that has big ramifications for temperatures on the ground. "We really want to understand these clouds so that we can use them in the models to project future climate," Ms Bekemeier said. Making matters more complex is the region's uniquely fresh air. While clouds on land are influenced by pollutants and dust, the Southern Ocean has some of the most pristine air on the planet, meaning the make-up of its clouds is different. Clouds formed over the Southern Ocean can contain microscopic marine life — like fragments of phytoplankton and gases they release. Ms Bekemeier said understanding what goes into making clouds in this region was a crucial step in shedding light on one of the biggest blind spots in climate models. A bit closer to home, CSIRO research scientist Ruhi Humphries has recently returned from a separate research trip onboard the RV Investigator, which also ventured into the vast, icy waters of the Southern Ocean. He, too, is interested in the region's uniquely fresh air, not just for clouds but for what it can tell us about the impacts of human activity on the atmosphere. "In a city, you would have lots of different sources of pollution. So you've got your cars that are spewing out CO2 and particles, and all your industry." This clean air over the Southern Ocean gives scientists a better idea of the bigger picture of climate change, away from pollution. "It's what we call baseline air," he said. "If you are going on a diet, you need to know your before weight so you can figure out your after weight and how much you've lost. "And for climate change, if we want to understand our impact and how to mitigate that effectively, we need to know what the atmosphere looks like without that pollution. "So, we have to find a location on the planet, which is as clean as possible … so then we can understand what the impact of humans is." This data has been captured in north-west Tasmania, at the Kennaook/Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, for nearly 50 years. But now, Dr Humphries and his team have the opportunity to cross-check how fresh that air is with the use of state-of-the-art technology. "We've always assumed … that the air that we measured there is representative of that really distant Southern Ocean air," he said. "But now … we're taking the ship south-west, down into the Southern Ocean, to test how far Kennaook/Cape Grim is representative of that baseline air." According to both Dr Humphries and Ms Bekemeier, the research taking place in the Southern Ocean is a key part of understanding the impacts of climate change globally. "The Southern Ocean is vital to the future of our planet," Ms Bekemeier said. "Changes to this region will have impacts for the entire planet; impacts on the Antarctic circulations, impacts on the polar jet stream, impacts on climate around the world, impacts on weather in Australia." It's for this reason that both Ms Bekemeier and Dr Humphries say it's important the whole world works together, as part of a global endeavour to advance climate science. "We're part of global monitoring networks, and we're doing global climate models." For Ms Bekemeier, this hits particularly close to home. Her role on the Southern Ocean voyage was funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF has faced significant funding cuts this year under the Trump administration, with hundreds of research grants terminated. "I am really devastated to see what is happening to climate science and science in general in the United States and the gutting of the US Antarctic program," she said. "I'm grateful that we have colleagues that can continue this work because we might not be able to do it in our own country."