IPAC Uplink Newsletter
April 2022
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NExScI Science Affairs at IPAC |
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The Science Affairs team of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at IPAC manages NASA’s portion of time (approximately 90 nights per year) on the Keck telescopes. NASA’s time supports all areas of NASA science. Any PI at a U.S.-based institution can apply for time. The NASA Keck Call for Proposals is released twice yearly, with proposals due in mid-September and mid-March. |
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NExScI supports the annual NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP). The NHFP awards 24 postdoctoral fellowships each year across all areas of NASA astrophysics; applications are due in early November.
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Each year NExScI offers the Sagan Summer Workshop, a week-long workshop that explores a specific exoplanet topic in detail. The topic of the 2022 workshop is “Exoplanet Science in the Age of Gaia.”
Come see us in the exhibit hall at the June 2022 AAS meeting here in Pasadena! We’ll be part of the NASA Exoplanets booth.
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Data Pipeline Development |
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IPAC is responsible for developing and operating the first three stages of the data pipeline, producing both science calibrated images and photometric measurements. These data, along with custom tools for working with them, will be available via IRSA. IPAC has completed the first of six scheduled build cycles and will be gradually adding functionality and supporting mission testing over the next few years in the lead-up to launch. |
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The Roman Virtual Lecture Series, run jointly by JPL, IPAC, GSFC, and STScI, is open to the entire astronomical community and covers science, engineering, and technology related to the Roman mission. Talks are the 3rd Thursday of each month from 1 pm to 1:30 pm Pacific/4 pm to 4:30 pm Eastern, and are ~ 20 minutes with ~ 10 minutes reserved for Q&A. |
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Special Roman Session @ AAS 240 |
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We are pleased to announce that a splinter session on Testing Hierarchical Models of Galaxy Evolution with the Roman Space Telescope will be held at the 240th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Tuesday, June 14, 2022 at 10 am PDT. |
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NITARP (NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program) posters planned to be presented by the 2020/2021 NITARP teams will be presented at the 240th AAS meeting in Pasadena this June. The posters, as well as a listing of the members of the 2022 NITARP class are available on this webpage. The 2022 NITARP class was oversubscribed; look for applications for the 2023 class this summer!
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NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) |
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IRSA Functionality Upgrades |
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IRSA's front-page tool for discovering datasets that cover a given position on the sky is now significantly faster.
A new version of IRSA's multi-mission search and visualization tool, IRSA Viewer, includes improvements to image and spectra visualization. The ZTF Image Access Tool incorporates these features as well.
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The tenth public data release from the Zwicky Transient Facility contains approximately 36 million images, 600 billion source detections extracted from these images, and over 4 billion light curves.
The NEOWISE Reactivation 2022 Release adds approximately 2.5 million image sets and 18.7 billion source detections to the public archive. These data were acquired during the eighth year of the NEOWISE Reactivation Mission.
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Luisa Rebull authored an article titled "Real Astronomy Data for Anyone: Explore NASA's IRSA" in the journal "The Physics Teacher" (Volume 60, Issue 1). A preprint is available. The published version is available to subscribers.
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NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database |
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The Chandra Source Catalog (CSC 2.0.1), with over 317K unique X-ray sources, has been integrated into the database. The next public NED update with new data from the literature is planned for release later in April 2022. |
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NED scientist David Cook will be giving a talk "How Complete are Galaxy Catalogs for Gravitational Wave Searches?" featuring new results from analysis of data in NED. |
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We are seeking new members of the NED Users Committee. If you would like to help shape the future of NED, please contact Joseph Mazzarella (mazz@ipac.caltech.edu).
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The paper "Best Practices for Data Publication in the Astronomical Literature," was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement. We encourage all authors of articles containing astronomical data to refer to these Best Practices before submission to a journal. |
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The Keck Observatory Archive (KOA) is now ingesting in near real-time raw data from the KCWI, ESI, DEIMOS and HIRES instruments, and science-ready reduced data from KCWI and DEIMOS. All remaining active instruments will follow later this year. KOA is a collaboration between NExScI and the W. M. Keck Observatory. |
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Two high school students recently first-authored Astronomical Journal papers on discoveries they made using data from NASA's WISE/NEOWISE mission. Tarun Kota reported on sixteen previously overlooked stars and brown dwarfs in the Sun's immediate vicinity, while Hunter Brooks reported on a brown dwarf candidate believed to be a rare low-metallicity T dwarf, one of the few such objects currently recognized. Their discoveries were made in concert with cybersecurity expert Dan Caselden, who provided machine learning techniques to scrub the WISE data for objects exhibiting motion. To find their discoveries, Tarun and Hunter scrutinized lists of motion candidates using WiseView, an online tool Dan wrote to visualize the WISE/NEOWISE time-series data. The two students were mentored by Davy Kirkpatrick in collaboration with Tarun's Student Astrophysics Society and under the aegis of NASA's Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project.
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Tarun Kota (left), currently a senior at Eastview High School in Apple Valley, MN, and Hunter Brooks (right, image credit Hunter Brooks), now a freshman undergraduate at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. Shown on the right is a WiseView tool image of the vicinity of the bright star zeta Ophiuchi. |
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Laugh and Learn about the Science of Exoplanets in the Fun-Filled "Astrophysics Variety Hour" |
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How do astronomers find planets beyond our solar system... without even seeing them? Join host Felicia Day on a lighthearted channel-surfing romp that explores where planets and people came from, and how we are finding worlds orbiting distant stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
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IPAC at the 240th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, June 12–16, 2022
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We are looking forward to seeing you (virtually or in-person) in our hometown! IPAC will have a vibrant presence at the 240th meeting of the AAS in Pasadena, CA, held June 12–16, 2022. Look for us at the IPAC booth — staffed both physically and virtually. Several talks, posters and workshops will be given by IPAC scientists. Follow our activities at https://www.ipac.caltech.edu/page/ipac-at-aas-dps.
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