Tag archives: Las Cumbres Observatory

A Comet Occurrence 50,000 Years in the Making
By Joanne Calitri   |   February 7, 2023

Get your popcorn and astronaut ice cream ready for some rare astral entertainment. The famous Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF – at its peak February 1 and 2 – can be viewed at NNE, 23 to 40 degrees above the horizon, from 9 pm to sunrise, with amateur telescopes and possibly your 10x binoculars. The significance […]

Astronomy on Tap Is On!
By Joanne Calitri   |   September 13, 2022

Tune in you star trekkers, gazers, and galaxy aficionados, Las Cumbres Observatory’s (LCO) Astronomy on Tap is back on the planet every month in a new location: the outside patio at M Special Taproom on State Street. The new venue allows for the Astro on Tap monthlies to be an all-ages event, while still be […]

Our Solar System: The Leftovers
By Tom Farr   |   March 25, 2021

We all learned in school that there are eight planets (well, nine if you’re as old as I am), but our solar system is messier than that. There are millions of leftover rocks called asteroids; bits of ice and rock that come and go called comets; and objects out there beyond Neptune called, in dry […]

Arts Lockdown Series Part 4: From Space with Astrophysicist Andy Howell, PhD
By Joanne Calitri   |   August 27, 2020

Transporting us from science to sci-fi films is astrophysicist Andy Howell, PhD. He is a staff scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), where a global network of 23 telescopes operate 24/7. His team co-discovered the first “kiloanova” in 2017, two neutron stars that rotate around each other and release gravitational waves, merging to create a […]

Black Holes and Dark Matter News
By Joanne Calitri   |   April 18, 2019

On April 10, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) scientists historically released the first image of a black hole they have taken using observations of the center of the galaxy M87, a massive galaxy in the constellation of Virgo. This black hole is located 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5-billion times larger […]