UKIRT discovers "impossible" binary stars

Artist's impression of the two red dwarfs orbiting each other (credit: J. Pinfield, for the RoPACS network).

Despite facing closure UKIRT continues to produce superb scientific discoveries. In this case a pair of red dwarfs with impossibly tight orbits.

`"To our complete surprise, we found several red dwarf binaries with orbital periods significantly shorter than the 5 hour cut-off found for Sun-like stars, something previously thought to be impossible", said Bas Nefs from Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, lead author of the paper. "It means that we have to rethink how these close-in binaries form and evolve."

Since stars shrink in size early in their lifetime, the fact that these very tight binaries exist means that their orbits must also have shrunk as well since their birth, otherwise the stars would have been in contact early on and have merged. However, it is not at all clear how these orbits could have shrunk by so much.'

For more, see the full RAS press release.

I'm so pathetic

I haven't taken my camera with me, so this is Dam Square photographed by someone else. I'm staying just to the right in a quirky but very nice hotel. The smell of cannabis on the street outside reminds me of my student days but I have yet to find a city quite like this. It's just brilliant - countless restaurants and bars all within walking distance and an opportunity to forget all the crap that's going on right now.

Then again I have to give a talk about how wonderful UKIRT is despite dealing with the shut-down notice we got a month or so ago from the STFC. The presentation is scheduled for Friday afternoon, the penultimate talk on a Friday evening when everyone has gone home. Wonderful. I have a really good joke to tell as well...

STFC - spending more money for less science

What would you do given the following choice?

1. You have two telescopes that between them deliver more science than any other observatory in the world. You can cut the funding for one of them but the cost of the remaining telescope increases so it costs the same as running both together. The result is less science but the amount of money spent doesn't change. Science becomes more expensive.
   
2. You have two telescopes that between them deliver more science than anyone else in the world. You can keep both telescopes running until a cut-off date sometime in the future. It costs the same as running only one of them, but the science is doubled (actually, tripled going by current publication rates).

I'm curious if anyone else comes up with the same decision as the UK STFC, which is to adopt option 1.

Devastated

From an STFC press release:

"Acting on advice and recommendations from its Science Board, Council has now agreed to:

• extend operation of JCMT to end September 2014, to allow for completion of the agreed science programme for the SCUBA-2 instrument on the JCMT;

• cease STFC support for the operation of UKIRT from end September 2013, a year after the completion of its current survey programme;

• extend operations of ING initially until March 2015, which will provide additional time for negotiations with existing partners with the goal of retaining continued access to the northern sky for UK astronomers."

The reason for ending support for UKIRT a year earlier than JCMT is unclear since there are no savings to be made here, UKIRT essentially comes for free as long as the JCMT is supported. The opportunity to take a year's worth of free data using one of the most scientifically productive telescopes on the planet is being thrown away. As are our jobs.

UKIRT: on the way to another new record

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. This will continue I'm afraid because I'm just too busy. Every so often, however, there's a bit of news that really needs to be shared and it's UKIRT's productivity this time. I still can't believe these numbers are correct but so far everything checks out. We've become a stunningly productive observatory in the last few years and as long as the JCMT is funded with its revolutionary new instrument, SCUBA-2, this stuff comes for free.

UKIRT's productivity continues to rise

A babbling brook

We were on the way to California's wine country via a small country road and took a break to watch the water. I wish I'd packed a picnic...

On the boardwalk

A few more shots from Moonstone Beach including a reworked panorama although I'm still not happy with it. Have to learn to take off the polarizer when doing panoramas, it really makes the sky look weird...

On the boardwalk

On the beach

On the rocks (shaken, not stirred)

Back on the boardwalk

A postcard from Cambria

This small coastal town in central California is turning out to be my "special place"! I can't wait to get back there. Beautiful scenery, friendly people and pretty much crime-free. A place to relax with your loved one and leave stress behind for a few days. Just a few miles inland are a gazillion wineries if that takes your fancy. Twenty miles north along the Pacific Coast Highway takes you up high and into the most stunning coastal scenery you can imagine or just potter around in Cambria and enjoy the beach, food, wine and wonderful company!

Just steps from the beach

Moonstone Beach, Cambria, California.

Quite a lot of stars

UKIRT made the news overnight. A press release was made at the National Astronomy Meeting in the UK entitled "Milky Way image reveals detail of a billion stars" which has led to dozens of news items around the world including this one at the BBC which was the number one most-read article for a while and is still the most shared as I write this. This is just one result of the work we have been doing for the last seven years (UKIDSS) and in this case shared with the VISTA survey which is doing an infrared survey of the southern hemisphere.

The picture above is just a tiny fraction of the sky covered in the image. You can play around with the entire billion-star image yourself by going to the online interactive tool hosted by the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. It was images similar to this that first attracted me to astronomy although back in those days they were optical rather than infrared! Still, just gazing at pictures of thousands of stars and nebulae as a little kid made me wonder just exactly what was out there and here I am, er, just a few years later, still wondering!

To put things in context, even though a billion stars sounds a rather large number, it's still just a fraction of the stars in our own Galaxy in which we believe there are 200 to 400 billion stars. Add to that there are probably about 200 billion galaxies in the universe you hopefully start to appreciate what an enormous place we live in and that we are literally a tiny and likely insignificant speck of dust in the grand scheme.

Incidentally I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that the UKIDSS consortium was recently awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Group Award. In another twist of fate, and one completely unexpected, the consortium agreed with the RAS to have a few individually named certificates made to "core" members of the project. The list includes some people who work at the UKIRT or worked there until recently: Andy Adamson, Luca Rizzi and Watson Varricatt. They all thoroughly deserve the award and certificate. Apparently I'm getting one as well although I'm not sure why, but I get to pick it up in May when I next visit Edinburgh. That'll be something nice to look forward to!