Scientists have installed a new instrument on the William Herschel Telescope that will show how our galaxy formed in "unprecedented detail." The technology will allow the telescope to study 5 million stars a year and, by analyzing each star and the speed at which it moves, figure out how the Milky Way has evolved over billions of years, reports the BBC.
Built in 1987, William Herschel is the second largest telescope in Europe, perched atop a mountain on the Spanish island of La Palma. Thanks to him, a huge black hole in the center of the Milky Way was discovered and the first observations of a gamma-ray burst were made. The telescope is named after the British astronomer William Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus and Saturn's moons.
Work on a new instrument for the telescope has been going on for more than ten years. It was headed by Professor Gavin Dalton. The 80,000-piece device was called the Weave. It is a disc with many fiber optic tubes, each looking like a tiny telescope.
Pointing "William Herschel" at a site in the sky allows you to determine the position of about 1000 stars, after which the Weave robotic fingers "stretch" through the tube to each star in the field of view. Each tube captures the light from one star and redirects it to a device where spectral analysis takes place, telling about the history and origin of the star.
The study of information from all the tubes takes about an hour, during which the next 1000 stars are determined on the other side of the disk, to which the Weave tubes will stretch. Scientists expect that in less than a year they will study about 5 million stars in this way, including their age, speed of movement and chemical composition.
The Milky Way is a dense spiral vortex with up to 400 billion stars. The galaxy grew out of successive mergers with other small galaxies over billions of years. Weave can calculate the speed, direction, age, and composition of every star it observes, creating a map of the stars as they move through the Milky Way. According to Professor Dalton, this map will allow us to reconstruct the entire structure and history of the Milky Way in details that have not been seen before.
bbabo.Net