Astronomers Pinpoint World’s Best Stargazing Site

Ever wonder where in the world humans have the absolute best view of all the stars in the sky? Astronomers say they’ve found it – the coldest, driest, calmest place on earth, which is expected to yield images three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground.

A research team used data from satellites, ground stations and climate models to determine the factors that can affect astronomy, like cloud cover, sky brightness, water vapor and wind speeds.

From Science Daily:

The researchers pinpointed a site, known simply as Ridge A, that is 4,053m high up on the Antarctic Plateau. It is not only particularly remote but extremely cold and dry. The study revealed that Ridge A has an average winter temperature of minus 70ºC and that the water content of the entire atmosphere there is sometimes less than the thickness of a human hair.

It is also extremely calm, which means that there is very little of the atmospheric turbulence elsewhere that makes stars appear to twinkle: “It’s so calm that there’s almost no wind or weather there at all,” says Dr Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian Observatory and visiting professor to UNSW, who led the study.

“The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers,” says Dr Saunders. “Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.”

It doesn’t look like much – just a wide swath of frigid, snow-covered land – but putting an observatory here could provide some stunning images. And, there’s nothing like a really clear view of the stars to make you appreciate the vastness of the universe.

Link [Science Daily]
Photo credit: Flickr user Coda

Scientists Debate Moving Polar Bears to Antarctica as Arctic Melts

Scientists are obviously reaching a point of true desperation. While the world still debates whether climate change is even real (eye roll), the scientific community is coming back to an idea that was once considered wrongheaded and dangerous: moving species to new areas of the world as their natural habitats become inhabitable. First up: moving the polar bears to the other side of the globe.

From Wired:

Caught between climate change and human pressure, species are going extinct 100 times faster than at any point in human history.

And some scientists say that figure is too conservative. The real extinction rate, they say, is a full 1,000 times higher than normal. The last time such annihilation took place was during the time of the dinosaurs. And though many conservationists say that saving species by transplanting them is foolish, others say there’s no choice.

“They want the world to be what it was before. But it’s not going to happen,” said Australian ecologist Hugh Possingham, author of an assisted-colonization article published Thursday in Science (citation page).

This does indeed seem like a very bad idea. Who knows what the effects could be of moving species so far away from their natural habitats? After all, such a move will affect the entire global ecosystem. The animal kingdom would have to figure out a new hierarchy. The consequences would be massive. It’s truly frightening to imagine that we are nearly to the point of needing a modern-day Noah’s Ark.

Link [Wired]
Photo credit: Flickr user edanley