By Patricia Daukantas

You may have heard about the X Prizes, but what about the “L Prize”? Instead of taking people to outer space, the L Prize seeks to brighten up “inner space” with energy-efficient lighting.

Specifically, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is sponsoring a technology competition to speed up the development of ultra-efficient LED lamps for general use. DOE actually launched the $20-million contest, formally called the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Competition ($10 million top prize, $5 million to the runners-up), in May 2008, but only now does the challenge have its first official entrant: Philips (or Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands).

DOE is seeking a solid-state replacement for the 60-W bulb. Criteria: The winning lamp must put out as much light as a 60-W incandescent bulb, but use 10 W or less of electricity. It must simulate the color spectrum of incandescent lighting, and it must have a lifetime of at least 25,000 hours.

“No bulb today could meet the L Prize standards,” the contest home page states. DOE promises to conduct a rigorous evaluation of product submissions “to avoid problems with long-term market acceptance.” (Who actually prefers fluorescent lighting?) The government has lined up a team of partners, from major electric utilities to the National Resources Defense Council, to test the products in the field and, eventually, to promote the winners.

2009-09 September

By Patricia Daukantas

Earlier this year, I wrote about the increasing amount of collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers, due in no small part to the growing availability of amateur optical and imaging equipment. A new International Year of Astronomy project by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) gives viewers all over the world a magnificent vista of the Milky Way from amateur telescopes.

The Web site GigaGalaxy Zoom allows users to zoom in on incredible views of our home galaxy and its center. The first image, released September 14, shows a panorama of the entire Milky Way as photographed from both the northern and southern hemispheres. You can zoom in on such “destinations” as the beautiful Rosette Nebula and the Magellanic Clouds, which are actually irregular dwarf galaxies passing by our neighborhood. The second image, released yesterday, focuses on the center of the Milky Way and features star-forming regions, a globular cluster and dark clouds of dust.

With such awesome resolution (800 million and 340 million pixels, respectively), you might think that ESO took these two panoramas with its collection of gigantic observatories: the Very Large Telescope and the three instruments at La Silla (all in Chile) or even Europe’s share of Hubble Space Telescope time.

Nope!

The photographer for the galaxy-wide panorama, French photojournalist Serge Brunier, used a Nikon digital camera with a 50-mm lens and an equatorial mount (to compensate for the Earth’s rotation during the exposures). He took the photographs from ESO sites in Chile as well as La Palma in the Canary Islands. His collaborator, Frederic Tapissier of France, and ESO imaging experts digitally stitched together nearly 1,200 separate photos to show the entire sky.

Likewise, the Milky Way center was imaged by Stephane Guisard, another French native who works as an ESO optical engineer in Chile by day and an amateur astrophotographer by night. With his 10-cm telescope, he collected 1,200 images constituting more than 200 hours of exposure time over 29 nights under the clear skies of Paranal Observatory – all on his “free time.”

ESO plans to release the final panoramic portrait in this series next Monday, September 28. I can’t wait!

2009-09 September

By Patricia Daukantas

Remember the thrill of getting a roll of developed film back from the drugstore or camera shop and looking at the photos for the first time? (Yeah, those were the days before digital cameras.) You can recapture a bit of that thrill by looking at a new set of images from the recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble, as you may recall, got its final visit from a team of astronauts in May, several months later than originally scheduled. The servicing crew installed a new wide-field camera as well as an improved spectrograph. The astronauts also repaired two other instruments on the astronomical orbiter.

Pretty pictures of galaxies, nebulae and planets tend to get all the attention in the press, so it’s noteworthy that NASA included several spectra from the new and refurbished spectrographs on Hubble, along with explanations of their significance in the studies of active galaxies, quasars and dying stars.

Scientists involved with the Hubble servicing mission expressed their enthusiasm for the research possibilities opened up by the orbiting telescope, more sensitive and capable than before.

2009-09 September astronomy, hubble

By Patricia Daukantas

Starting today (September 1), Thomas Edison’s most famous invention has been banned in most of Europe.

European Union countries have halted the sale of incandescent light bulbs for household use in favor of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). (Halogen bulbs, though they are less energy-efficient than CFLs, are not included in the ban.)

In recent weeks, the impending prohibition has spurred some consumers to stockpile the incandescent bulbs, although stores are allowed to sell off their remaining stock. Some critics also charge that light-sensitive people, or persons with certain medical conditions, react poorly to the emission from CFLs. According to one British press report, some families say they will exploit a loophole in the new law that allows specialized industrial uses of incandescent bulbs and try to get the bulbs from those suppliers.

In the United States, new energy-efficiency rules for light bulbs will go into effect in 2012. However, if researchers can boost the efficiency of incandescent lamps sufficiently by then, the bulbs won’t become extinct in Edison’s native land. “Blackening” tungsten lamp filaments with laser light, as demonstrated by University of Rochester (New York, U.S.A.) researchers, may increase the efficiency of incandescent bulbs.

2009-08 August