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Additional information, including science contact, provided at the end of this Carnegie Observatories News Release

July 14, 2003

Pasadena, Calif. -- Recent near-infrared images from a new camera called PANIC (Persson's Auxilliary Nasmyth Infrared Camera) on the 6.5-meter Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile, confirm that the camera and telescope hold a promising future for understanding the nature of dark energy, exploring the formation and evolution of distant galaxies, and identifying protoplanetary material around young stars.

Installed on the Clay telescope of the Magellan Project, PANIC can image some of the faintest targets ever observed. Under the best conditions, the immense light-gathering power and superb image quality of the Clay telescope will be used to observe supernovae in extremely distant galaxies, observations that will help to reveal the nature of the mysterious dark energy that comprises the majority of the energy in the Universe. The nature of this dark energy is one of the outstanding questions in modern astrophysics. "PANIC's superb image quality can measure distant supernovae extremely precisely, measurements that are crucial for understanding the nature of the dark energy," states Dr. Eric Persson, Carnegie Observatories astronomer and principal designer of the instrument.

Among the first objects PANIC has imaged is the Antennae - the famous pair of interacting galaxies laced with many young, massive star clusters and dust. Using observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and PANIC, the PANIC team made a composite image that demonstrates the excellent image quality of the camera and reveals red star clusters barely visible in the HST data. "Near-infrared observations with PANIC can see through clouds of gas and dust that obscure our normal vision. They open up a whole new window to study star formation, distant galaxies, and supernovae," noted Dr. Wendy Freedman, director of the Carnegie Observatories. In the second image, using a filter that isolates light from molecular hydrogen, the team viewed the planetary nebula NGC 3132 -- a remnant gas shell from an old red star.

PANIC is the first near-infrared camera built for the Magellan Project, a consortium with over 300 astronomers from five institutions: the Carnegie Observatories, Harvard University, the University of Arizona, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Michigan. It was built at Carnegie over the last two years and began operations in Chile in April.

High Resolution PANIC images available at this link: http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/news_releases/panic_images.html (Note: revised link.)

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CAPTIONS FOR IMAGES AT THE LINK

All of these images were obtained during the commissioning run for PANIC, which was in April 2003.

Caption 1 under "additional images"

This color image of the Antennae is a composite of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and PANIC data. The Antennae are pair of interacting galaxies with many young, massive star clusters and a great deal of dust. Young stars are very blue and formed in this galactic collision, which also resulted in a lot of dust, which blocks more blue light (shorter wavelengths) than red light (longerwavelengths).

For this reason, regions behind a lot of dust are much easier to see at longer, red wavelengths. In this picture the shorter wavelength HST data was used for the blue and green color channels, while the PANIC data (longer, near-infrared data) was used for the red color channel. The blue star clusters, thus, really appear blue, while the very dusty regions, which are much easier to see in the near-infrared, really appear red. Note that toward the bottom of the image there is a large, red star cluster, barely visible in the HST data, while quite obvious in the PANIC frame indicating that it is buried under a great deal of dust.

Caption 2

The three-panel image of the Antennae displays the three images used to make the color picture. The first two images are from HST, while the third is the image from PANIC. The main thing to note on this image is that the image quality, or sharpness, is nearly the same for PANIC and HST. PANIC is thus able to resolve sources nearly as well as HST, at least under the best conditions (when the atmosphere is the most stable).

Caption 3

The picture of the planetary nebula NGC 3132 was obtained through a filter that is sensitive to emission from molecular hydrogen, the most common molecule in the universe. A planetary nebula is actually the outer envelope of an old star that has been ejected into space. The red filaments are the remnants of the star's outer envelope, which are now glowing because of the light from the hot remnant (white dwarf) of the original star.

Caption 4

This image shows the PANIC image of molecular hydrogen and an HST image that is sensitive to emission from oxygen. The relative quality of these images also indicates that PANIC is capable of producing very high quality images.

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The Magellan Project is a collaboration of the Magellan Consortium, which designed, built, and uses the twin 6.5-meter Baade and Clay Telescopes at Carnegie's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The Carnegie Institution of Washington (http://www.CarnegieInstitution.org ), a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902, is a private, nonprofit organization with six research departments in the U.S.: Plant Biology, Global Ecology, Embryology, the Geophysical Laboratory, the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, and the Carnegie Observatories.

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The original version of this press release is available on-line at http://www.CarnegieInstitution.org/news_releases/news_030715.html.