{"id":8040,"date":"2022-08-02T13:08:23","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T13:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins"},"modified":"2022-08-02T13:31:19","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T13:31:19","slug":"weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins","title":{"rendered":"Weave: New device will investigate Milky Way\u2019s origins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. <\/strong><\/span>Scientists have supercharged one of Earth\u2019s most powerful telescopes with new technology that will reveal how our galaxy formed in unprecedented detail.<\/p>\n

The William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma, Spain will be able to survey 1,000 stars per hour until it has catalogued a total of five million.<\/p>\n

A super-fast mapping device linked up to WHT will analyse the make-up of each star and the speed at which it travels.<\/p>\n

It will show how our Milky Way galaxy was built up over billions of years.<\/p>\n

Prof Gavin Dalton of Oxford University has spent more than a decade developing the instrument, known as \u2018Weave\u2019.<\/p>\n

He told me that he was \u201cbeyond excited\u201d that it is ready to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a fantastic achievement from a lot of people to make this happen and it\u2019s great to have it working,\u201d he said. \u201cThe next step is the new adventure, it\u2019s brilliant!\u201d<\/p>\n

Weave has been installed on the WHT, which sits high on a mountain top on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma. The name stands for WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer \u2013 and that\u2019s exactly what it does.<\/p>\n

It has 80,000 separate parts and is a miracle of engineering.<\/p>\n

For each patch of sky the WHT is pointed at, astronomers identify the positions of a thousand stars. Weave\u2019s nimble robotic fingers then carefully place a fibre-optic \u2013 a light-transmitting tube \u2013 precisely on each location on a plate, pointing towards its corresponding star.<\/p>\n

These fibres are in effect tiny telescopes. Each one captures light from a single star and channels it to another instrument. This then splits it into a rainbow spectrum, which contains the secrets of the star\u2019s origin and history.<\/p>\n

All this is completed in just one hour. While this is going on, fibre optics for the next thousand stars are positioned on the reverse side of the plate, which flips over to analyse the next set of targets once the previous survey has been completed.<\/p>\n

Our galaxy is a dense spiral swirl of up to 400 billion stars. But it started out as a relatively small collection of stars.<\/p>\n

It grew from successive mergers with other small galaxies over billions of years. As well as the addition of stars from the new galaxies joining ours, each merger stirs things up enough to lead to brand new star formation.<\/p>\n

Weave is able to calculate the speed, direction, age and composition of each star it observes, essentially creating a motion picture of stars moving in the Milky Way. According to Prof Dalton, by extrapolating backwards, it will be possible to reconstruct the entire formation of the Milky Way in detail never seen before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be able to trace the galaxies that have been absorbed as the Milky Way has been built up over cosmic time \u2013 and see how each absorption triggers new star formation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr Marc Balcells, who is in overall charge of the WHT told BBC News that he believed that Weave would lead to a big shift in our understanding of how galaxies are made.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been hearing for decades that we are in a golden era of astronomy \u2013 but what the future awaits is a lot more important.<\/p>\n

\u201cWeave is going to be answering questions that astronomers have been trying to answer for decades such as how many pieces come together to make a big galaxy and how many galaxies were united to make the Milky Way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Cecilia Farina, an instrumentation specialist on the project, said she believed that Weave would make astronomical history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are an enormous amount of things that we are going to discover that we had not expected to find,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause the Universe is full of surprises.\u201d<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Sierra-Leone<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. Scientists have supercharged one of Earth\u2019s most powerful telescopes with new technology that will reveal how our galaxy formed in unprecedented detail. The William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma, Spain will be able to survey 1,000 stars per hour until it has catalogued a total of five million. A super-fast mapping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":8039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,9],"tags":[291,293,292],"class_list":["post-8040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-miscellaneous","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-sierra-leone","tag-sierra-leone"],"yoast_head":"\nWeave: New device will investigate Milky Way\u2019s origins - Sierra Leone<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scientists have supercharged one of Earth\u2019s most powerful telescopes with new technology that will reveal how our galaxy ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Weave: New device will investigate Milky Way\u2019s origins\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Scientists have supercharged one of Earth\u2019s most powerful telescopes with new technology that will reveal how our galaxy ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sierra Leone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-08-02T13:08:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-08-02T13:31:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/sites\/16\/2022\/08\/postQueueImg_4-62e9254326510.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"976\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"549\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Weave: New device will investigate Milky Way\u2019s origins\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-08-02T13:08:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-08-02T13:31:19+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins\"},\"wordCount\":643,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/sites\/16\/2022\/08\/postQueueImg_4-62e9254326510.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Sierra-Leone\",\"Sierra-Leone\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"homepage-english\",\"miscellaneous\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/weave-new-device-will-investigate-milky-ways-origins\",\"name\":\"Weave: New device will investigate Milky Way\u2019s origins - 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