ALMA Pinpoints Early Galaxies at Record Speed

ESO -European Southern Observatory logo.

17 April 2013

 ALMA Pinpoints Early Galaxies

A team of astronomers has used the new ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) telescope to pinpoint the locations of over 100 of the most fertile star-forming galaxies in the early Universe. ALMA is so powerful that, in just a few hours, it captured as many observations of these galaxies as have been made by all similar telescopes worldwide over a span of more than a decade.

The most fertile bursts of star birth in the early Universe took place in distant galaxies containing lots of cosmic dust. These galaxies are of key importance to our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution over the history of the Universe, but the dust obscures them and makes them difficult to identify with visible-light telescopes. To pick them out, astronomers must use telescopes that observe light at longer wavelengths, around one millimetre, such as ALMA.

ALMA Pinpoints Early Galaxies

“Astronomers have waited for data like this for over a decade. ALMA is so powerful that it has revolutionised the way that we can observe these galaxies, even though the telescope was not fully completed at the time of the observations,” said Jacqueline Hodge (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Germany), lead author of the paper presenting the ALMA observations.

The best map so far of these distant dusty galaxies was made using the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX). It surveyed a patch of the sky about the size of the full Moon [1], and detected 126 such galaxies. But, in the APEX images, each burst of star formation appeared as a relatively fuzzy blob, which may be so broad that it covered more than one galaxy in sharper images made at other wavelengths. Without knowing exactly which of the galaxies are forming the stars, astronomers were hampered in their study of star formation in the early Universe.

The position of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South in the constellation of Fornax

Pinpointing the correct galaxies requires sharper observations, and sharper observations require a bigger telescope. While APEX has a single 12-metre-diameter dish-shaped antenna, telescopes such as ALMA use multiple APEX-like dishes spread over wide distances. The signals from all the antennas are combined, and the effect is like that of a single, giant telescope as wide as the whole array of antennas.

The team used ALMA to observe the galaxies from the APEX map during ALMA’s first phase of scientific observations, with the telescope still under construction. Using less than a quarter of the final complement of 66 antennas, spread over distances of up to 125 metres, ALMA needed just two minutes per galaxy to pinpoint each one within a tiny region 200 times smaller than the broad APEX blobs, and with three times the sensitivity. ALMA is so much more sensitive than other telescopes of its kind that, in just a few hours, it doubled the total number of such observations ever made.

ALMA Pinpoints Early Galaxies

Not only could the team unambiguously identify which galaxies had regions of active star formation, but in up to half the cases they found that multiple star-forming galaxies had been blended into a single blob in the previous observations. ALMA’s sharp vision enabled them to distinguish the separate galaxies.

“We previously thought the brightest of these galaxies were forming stars a thousand times more vigorously than our own galaxy, the Milky Way, putting them at risk of blowing themselves apart. The ALMA images revealed multiple, smaller galaxies forming stars at somewhat more reasonable rates,” said Alexander Karim (Durham University, United Kingdom), a member of the team and lead author of a companion paper on this work.

Zooming in on star-forming galaxies in the early Universe seen with ALMA

The results form the first statistically reliable catalogue of dusty star-forming galaxies in the early Universe, and provide a vital foundation for further investigations of these galaxies’ properties at different wavelengths, without risk of misinterpretation due to the galaxies appearing blended together.

Despite ALMA’s sharp vision and unrivalled sensitivity, telescopes such as APEX still have a role to play. “APEX can cover a wide area of the sky faster than ALMA, and so it’s ideal for discovering these galaxies. Once we know where to look, we can use ALMA to locate them exactly,” concluded Ian Smail (Durham University, United Kingdom), co-author of the new paper.

Comparing APEX and ALMA views of star-forming galaxies in the early Universe

Notes:

[1] The observations were made in a region of the sky in the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace) called the Chandra Deep Field South. It has been extensively studied already by many telescopes both on the ground and in space. The new observations from ALMA extend the deep and high resolution observations of this region into the millimetre/submillimetre part of the spectrum and complement the earlier observations.

More information:

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) is a collaboration between Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) at 50%, Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) at 23% and the European Southern Observatory at 27%.

This research was presented in the paper “An ALMA Survey of Submillimeter Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: Source Catalog and Multiplicity”, by J. Hodge et al., to appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

The companion paper, “An ALMA survey of submillimetre galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: High resolution 870 μm source counts”, on the multiplicity of the sources by A. Karim et al., will appear in the Oxford University Press journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The team is composed of J. A. Hodge (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie Heidelberg, Germany [MPIA]), A. Karim (Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, United Kingdom), I. Smail (Durham), A. M. Swinbank (Durham), F. Walter (MPIA), A. D. Biggs (ESO), R. J. Ivison (UKATC and Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom), A. Weiss (Max–Planck Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany), D. M. Alexander (Durham), F. Bertoldi (Argelander–Institute of Astronomy, Bonn University, Germany), W. N. Brandt (Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos & Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA), S. C. Chapman (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, United Kingdom), K. E. K. Coppin (McGill University, Montreal, Canada), P. Cox (IRAM, Saint–Martin d’Héres, France), A. L. R. Danielson (Durham), H. Dannerbauer (University of Vienna, Austria), C. De Breuck (ESO), R. Decarli (MPIA), A. C. Edge (Durham), T. R. Greve (University College London, United Kingdom), K. K. Knudsen (Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden), K. M. Menten (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany), H.–W. Rix (MPIA), E. Schinnerer (MPIA), J. M. Simpson (Durham), J. L. Wardlow (Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, USA) and P. van der Werf (Leiden Observatory, Netherlands).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-meters European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links:

Research paper: http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1318/eso1318a.pdf

Photos of ALMA: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/alma/

Press release from the Royal Astronomical Society (UK): http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stt196

Press release from MPIA (Heidelberg, Germany): http://www.mpia.de/Public/menu_q2e.php?Aktuelles/PR/2013/PR_2013_04/PR_2013_04_en.html

Images, Text, Credits: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Hodge et al., A. Weiss et al., NASA Spitzer Science Center/IAU and Sky & Telescope/ Videos: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO), J. Hodge et al., A. Weiss et al., NASA Spitzer Science Center, Digitized Sky Survey 2, and A. Fujii. Music: Movetwo.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s Wind Mission Encounters ‘SLAMS’ Waves

NASA - WIND Mission patch.

April 16, 2013

Earth is surrounded by a giant magnetic bubble called the magnetosphere. As it travels through space, a complex system of charged particles from the sun and magnetic structures piles up in front of it. Scientists wish to better understand this area in front of the bow shock, known as the foreshock, as it can help explain how energy from the rest of space makes its way past this boundary into the magnetosphere. Credit: Credit: NASA/GSFC.

As Earth moves around the sun, it travels surrounded by a giant bubble created by its own magnetic fields, called the magnetosphere. As the magnetosphere plows through space, it sets up a standing bow wave or bow shock, much like that in front of a moving ship. Just in front of this bow wave lies a complex, turbulent system called the foreshock. Conditions in the foreshock change in response to solar particles streaming in from the sun, moving magnetic fields and a host of waves, some fast, some slow, sweeping through the region.

To tease out what happens at that boundary of the magnetosphere and to better understand how radiation and energy from the sun can cross it and move closer to Earth, NASA launches spacecraft into this region to observe the changing conditions. From 1998 to 2002, NASA’s Wind spacecraft traveled through this foreshock region in front of Earth 17 times, providing new information about the physics there.

“I stumbled on some cool squiggles in the data,” says Lynn Wilson, who is deputy project scientist for Wind at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “They turned out to be a special kind of magnetic pulsations called short large amplitude magnetic structures, which we call SLAMS for short.”

SLAMS are waves with a single, large peak, a little like giant rogue waves that can develop in the deep ocean. By studying the region around the SLAMS and how they propagate, the Wind data showed SLAMS may provide an improved explanation for what accelerates narrow jets of charged particles back out into space, away from Earth. Tracking how any phenomenon catalyzes the movement of other particles is one of the crucial needs for modeling this region. In this case, understanding just how a wave can help initiate a fast-moving beam might also help explain what causes incredibly powerful rays that travel from other solar systems across interstellar space toward Earth. Wilson and his colleagues published a paper on these results in the Journal of Geophysical Research online on March 6, 2013.

The material pervading this area of space – indeed all outer space – is known as plasma. Plasma is much like a gas, but each particle is electrically charged so movement is governed as much by the laws of electromagnetics as it is by the fundamental laws of gravity and motion we more regularly experience on Earth.

“One of the unique things about space weather is how little things can have big effects,” says David Sibeck, a space scientist at Goddard who is a co-author on the paper. “An event might seem small and just generate local turbulence, but it can have profound effects downstream. The front of the magnetosphere is right in the line between sun and Earth, so it’s a crucial place to understand which small things can lead to big results.”

Since the 1970s, researchers have known that particles seem to be reflecting off the magnetosphere, creating intense particle jets called field aligned ion beams, but it’s not been clear how. Now, the Wind data helps provide a more detailed snapshot of how they form, as it travels through a slew of SLAMS and the ion beams.

The scientists’ job was to map where these events happen in space and time and to try to determine which events initiate which. Wilson says that the solar wind constantly moves toward Earth’s bow shock and then reflects off it.

“These structures get excited upstream and they start to grow and steepen, kind of like a water wave,” says Wilson. “But instead of breaking and tumbling over, they stand up, getting bigger and faster.” He says that the SLAMS attempt to move against the gale of solar wind streaming toward them, but ultimately get pushed back, creating a new messy boundary in front of the magnetosphere. “And then they effectively create their own new bow shock,” says Wilson.

NASA WIND spacecraft. Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Without the SLAMS, one would expect incoming particles from the solar wind to skip and slide along the outside of the bow shock, the way flowing water in a river might move around a large rock. But the SLAMS create a kind of magnetic mirror, causing the solar particles to reflect, attenuating them into one of these field-aligned ion beams, shooting out along magnetic fields back out and away from Earth.

Wind data does not inherently show which of these things create the other, it simply shows the presence of both. However, the ion beams were not seen in the space between the front of the true bow shock and the SLAMS -- only streaming away from the SLAMS out toward space. The beams also only appeared after the SLAMS had a chance to fully form. This strengthened the conclusion that the SLAMS themselves lead to the beams, acting as a magnetic mirror to reflect the particles outward.

The more we know about what happens in the frothy, turbulent area in front of Earth, the more we know about how the solar wind and other material bursting off the sun may be able to penetrate into near Earth-space.

“What happens to Earth’s magnetic field depends on what’s happening here at the front of the bow shock,” says Sibeck. “And what’s happening there is dramatic. It’s going to affect how much energy moves into the magnetosphere. Once inside the magnetosphere, it can create powerful solar storms and impact communications and GPS satellites that we depend on daily.”

The observations also have implications beyond protecting Earth. By sending spacecraft to observe plasma here, scientists can take advantage of the only area of the universe where we can study such plasma movement directly -- and thus apply the research to information about stars across the galaxy as well. For example, astrophysicists would like to better understand what causes cosmic ray acceleration -- particles that are generally much faster than the field aligned ion beams, but accelerated in similar manners, says Wilson. One theory is that a magnetic mirror of some kind causes the particles to bounce back and forth and gain more speed and energy as the mirrors move closer together. Near the front of the magnetosphere, the SLAMS might be doing just that.

For more information about NASA’s Wind mission, please visit: http://wind.nasa.gov/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Karen C. Fox.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Rocket Proton-M with the spacecraft Anik-G1 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome

ILS - Anik-G1 Launch Mission poster.


15.04.2013

 Rocket Proton-M with the spacecraft Anik-G1 launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome

April 15 at 22 h 36 min. Moscow time from the launch complex area 200 Baikonur calculations of rocket launchers and space industry in Russia is produced launch Vehicle (ILV) Proton-M with the upper stage (RB) Breeze-M, dedicated to the orbit telecommunications satellites vehicle (SV) Anik-G1.

Launch of Canadian Anik G1 Satellite on Proton-M Rocket

The first three stages of the Proton use a standard ascent profile to place the orbital unit (Breeze M upper stage and the Anik G1 satellite) into a sub-orbital trajectory. From this point in the mission, the Breeze M will perform planned mission maneuvers to advance the orbital unit first to a circular parking orbit, then to an intermediate orbit, followed by a transfer orbit, and finally to a geostationary transfer orbit. Separation of the Anik G1 satellite is scheduled to occur approximately 9 hours, 13 minutes after liftoff.

Anik G1 Satellite

Satellite Use:
  
Anik G1 is a commercial communications satellite built by SSL for Telesat. The multi-mission, 55 transponder satellite will be located at 107.3° West longitude. This satellite will double C- and Ku-band capacity over South America from this orbital location, provide additional DTH services in extended Ku-Band and provide military X-band coverage of the Americas and substantial portions of the Pacific Ocean.

Anik G1 commercial communications satellite coverage

ROSCOSMOS Press Release: http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=20030

For more information about ILS, visit: http://www.ilslaunch.com/

Press Service of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos PAO) / ILS / ILS TV / Translation: Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Hubble Catches Dusty Detail

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

April 15, 2013

The soft glow in this image is NGC 2768, an elliptical galaxy located in the northern constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). NGC 2768 appears here as a bright oval on the sky, surrounded by a wide, fuzzy cloud of material.

This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the dusty structure encircling the center of the galaxy, forming a knotted ring around the galaxy’s brightly glowing middle. Interestingly, this ring lies perpendicular to the plane of NGC 2768 itself, stretching up and out of the galaxy.

The dust in NGC 2768 forms an intricate network of knots and filaments. In the center of the galaxy are two tiny, S-shaped symmetric jets. These two flows of material travel outwards from the galactic center along curved paths, and are masked by the tangle of dark dust lanes that spans the body of the galaxy.

These jets are a sign of a very active center. NGC 2768 is an example of a Seyfert galaxy, an object with a supermassive black hole at its center. This speeds up and sucks in gas from the nearby space, creating a stream of material swirling inwards towards the black hole known as an accretion disk. This disk throws off material in very energetic outbursts, creating structures like the jets seen in the image above.

Notes:

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

ESA Hubble website: http://www.spacetelescope.org/

NASA Hubble website: http://hubblesite.org/

Image, Text, Credits: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Cargo spacecraft Progress M-17M undocked from the ISS

ROSCOSMOS - Russian Vehicles patch.

April 15, 2013

An unpiloted Russian Progress cargo ship departed the International Space Station early Monday, clearing the way for the arrival of the next Russian space freighter.

The ISS Progress 49 resupply ship undocked from the rear port of the station’s Zvezda service module at 8:02 a.m. EDT after more than five months at the orbiting complex. At the time of undocking the station was flying 257 statute miles over northern China.

Progress-M cargo spacecraft undocking

From a window in the Russian segment of the station, Russian crew members photographed the automated departure as the cargo craft fired its thrusters to move a safe distance away from the complex. After several days of thruster firings to help calibrate Russian radar systems on the ground, Progress 49 will re-enter Earth's atmosphere on Sunday, April 21 and will burn up over the Pacific Ocean. Progress resupply ships are not designed to be recovered, so, like its predecessors, Progress 49 was filled with trash and station discards after its cargo was unloaded.

Image above: A video camera on the departing ISS Progress 49 cargo craft captured this view of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV.

Progress 49 delivered nearly three tons of supplies for the station crew when it docked to the station a little less than six hours after launch on Oct. 31. This was the second of three Progress launches in a row that used an abbreviated launch-to-rendezvous schedule instead of following the typical two-day flight profile to reach the station.

Progress 49's departure clears the way for the arrival of the ISS Progress 51 cargo craft. Loaded with more than 3 tons of food, fuel, supplies and experiment hardware for the six crew members aboard the orbital laboratory, Progress 51 is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:12 a.m. (4:12 p.m. Kazakh time) Wednesday, April 24, and dock to the station two days later.

ROSCOSMOS Press Release: http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=20029

Images, Text, Credits: NASA / NASA TV / ROSCOSMOS.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Far-out space navigation from sideways satnav signals‏

ESA - Galileo-GIOVE Mission patch.

12 April 2013

ESA’s retired GIOVE-A navigation mission has become the first civilian satellite to perform GPS position fixes from high orbit. Its results demonstrate that current satnav signals could guide missions much further away in space, up to geostationary orbit or even as far as the Moon.

GIOVE-A has been able to fix its position, velocity and time from GPS signals, despite orbiting more than 1000 km above the downward-pointing US satellites.

“Satellite navigation has become almost as indispensable for most low-orbiting satellites as it is for car drivers and other terrestrial users,” says ESA’s Steeve Kowaltschek.

GIOVE-A

“Satellites equipped with satnav receivers can continuously monitor their orbit in space, enabling largely autonomous operations with limited ground intervention.

“GIOVE-A’s three months of data show that future geostationary satellites could operate in the same way, bringing real competitive advantage to the multi-billion-euro telecommunications satellite market.”

Long-life satellite

Launched in 2005 to claim radio frequencies and test hardware for Europe’s Galileo satnav constellation, the Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element-A, or GIOVE-A, mission far outlasted its original two-year design life.

It was formally decommissioned by ESA in the middle of last year, once the first Galileo satellites completed their orbital commissioning. Having been moved into a graveyard orbit about 100 km above Galileo’s orbital altitude of 23 222 km, control was passed to its prime contractor Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd of Guildford, UK.

GIOVE-A on the launch pad

SSTL then collaborated with ESA experts to employ the aged satellite for experimental satnav reception.

The tests used a satnav receiver that had been activated for only 90 minutes during the very beginning of the satellite’s seven-year operational life. 

“We have been really encouraged by the initial results from our receiver,” said Martin Unwin at SSTL. “Our patience has finally been rewarded, and we would like to make the best of this unique opportunity.”

SSTL is able to upload new software to the receiver in orbit, and has been able to apply sophisticated software algorithms to help detect faint satnav signals.

Further work is planned to refine operation through the use of an accurate onboard clock and orbit-estimating algorithms.

Taking a sideways look

GPS satellites – like those of Galileo, Russia’s Glonass or their Japanese, Chinese and Indian counterparts – aim their antennas directly at Earth.

Side lobe satnav signals available to satellites in higher orbits

Any satellite orbiting above the GPS constellation can only hope to detect signals from over Earth’s far side, but the majority are blocked by the planet. For a position fix, a satnav receiver requires a minimum of four satellites to be visible, but this is most of the time not possible if based solely on front-facing signals.

Instead, GIOVE-A makes use of signals emitted sideways from GPS antennas, within what is known as ‘side lobes’. Just like a flashlight, radio antennas shine energy to the side as well as directly forward.

Related links:

SSTL (UK): http://www.sstl.co.uk/

Mission accomplished for Galileo's pathfinder GIOVE-A: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Navigation/Mission_accomplished_for_Galileo_s_pathfinder_GIOVE-A

Control Systems: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering/Control_Systems

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / P. Carril / P. Müller.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

The LHC at level best

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

April 11, 2013

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel is renowned for its geological stability: set between layers of sandstone and molasse, it has allowed the world’s largest accelerators to run to sub-millimetre precision. But even the most stable of tunnels can be affected by geological events. To ensure the precise alignment of the LHC, the CERN survey team performs regular measurements of the vertical position of the magnets (a process known as “levelling”).

CERN surveyors take levelling measurements of the LHC magnets (Image: CERN)

The team has taken measurements of the LHC before its temperature reached 100 kelvin, beyond which there may be some mechanical movements. As no data could be gathered while the machine was in operation, these measurements will provide the clearest picture yet of the accelerator's position at the end of its run. The team used a so-called “fast levelling” technique, which involves measuring every second magnet in order to complete the survey as quickly as possible and to reduce the influence of the environmental conditions that could affect the observations made with an optical level. Technicians were able not only to measure the height of the magnets but also to make immediate height comparisons with the previous magnets. No magnet realignments were carried out at this stage.

“By comparing these measurements with the base measurements taken during the 2008-2009 shutdown, we will soon have an accurate picture of how ground disturbances may have affected the machine,” says Dominique Missiaen, leader of the Beams department section responsible for large-scale metrology. “This comparison will also help us predict possible future deviations and deterioration of the relative positions between magnets.”

The next series of levelling measurements will be taken at the end of the first long shutdown, once the work on the LHC interconnects has been completed. Technicians will then perform complete levelling measurements of the machine, measuring every LHC magnet and adjusting the magnet heights when they see significant variations. “The main aim of this levelling is not to have perfect measurements of the height of the machine, but rather to have an accurate evaluation of each magnet with respect to its neighbours,” says Missiaen. “We will ensure the magnets are all smoothly aligned for the restart of the machine, as even the smallest of differences can affect the beam orbit.”

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

For more information about Large Hadron Collider (LHC), visit: http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

For more information about CERN, visit: http://home.web.cern.ch/

Images, Text, Credits: CERN /  Katarina Anthony.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch