:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
|
|
|
|
|
|
CURRENT:
|
|
Keck Telescopes
As members of the
University
of California Observatories
astronomers within the Center have access to the twin Keck telescopes
-- the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes.
Located on
the summit of Mauna Kea inH awaii, the 10m Keck
telescopes probe the
deepest regions of the Universe with unprecedented power and
precision. Each telescope stands eight stories tall
and weighs 300
tons, yet operates with nanometer precision. At the heart of each Keck
Telescope is a revolutionary primary mirror. Ten meters in diameter,
the mirror is composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work in concert as
a single piece of reflective glass.
|
 |
|
|
Super-Kamiokande
UC
Irvine continues to be a leader in neutrino physics (e.g. Fred Reines
, IMB
) with its major involvement in the Super Kamiokande experiment.
Super-Kamiokande
is a 50,000 ton water Cerenkov detector in the Kamioka Mozumi
mine in Japan. In 1998 the Super-K collaboration announced
evidence for neutrino mass.
|
 |
|
|
AMANDA/IceCube
Located in the south pole, like its predecessor AMANDA, the IceCube
Neutrino Detector aims to detect very high-energy neutrinos using the
deep arctic ice.
For more high-energy and astro-particle experiments at UCI see this link.
|
 |
FUTURE
PROJECTS
|
|
LSST - Large Synoptic Survey
Telescope
Through the Center for Cosmology, UC
Irvine is a partner in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
(LSST). LSST is a proposed ground-based 8.4-meter telescope
with a remarkable 10 square-degree-field of view (the area of 40 full
moons in the sky). LSST will provide digital imaging of
faint astronomical objects across the entire sky, night after night and
will effectively construct at movie-like view of objects that change or
move on rapid timescales: exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous
near-Earth asteroids, distant Kuiper Belt Objects. LSST will also
be used to trace millions of stars throughout our galaxy and billions
of remote galaxies in the Universe. It will be used to map the
distribution of dark matter on large scales and provide multiple tests
of the mysterious Dark Energy that seems to pervade the cosmos.
|
|
|
|
TMT- Thirty Meter
Telescope
Through UCO Lick Observatories, UC Irvine
is a partner in the The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project, which
(under a different name) was identified in the National Academy of
Sciences report “Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium” as
the highest-priority new ground-based facility for the first decade of
the 21st century. The goal of the TMT project is to construct an
extremely large telescope based on more than 700 hexagonal-shaped
mirror segments that stretch a total of 30 meters in diameter. With
nearly ten-times the collecting area of the current largest telescope
in the world (see Keck above), TMT will probe the first galaxies to
produce light in the Universe and help astronomers answer the most
challenging questions in astronomy and astrophysics, from “How do
planets form?” to “What is the ultimate fate of our galaxy?”
|
|
|
|
ANITA - Antarctic Impulsive
Transient Antenna
The
ambitious and innovative ANITA detector is designed to be the first
device to identify high energy neutrinos created by collisions between
cosmic rays and the the cosmic microwave photons that pervade the
Universe.
|
 |
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
|
