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Simons Observatory

@simonsobservatory.org

Figuring out some of the mysteries of the Universe from Chile at simonsobservatory.org

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Simons Observatory@simonsobservatory.org · 3mo ago

Happy 60th birthday to physicist Uroš Seljak, born on 13 May 1966 in Slovenia, who coined the term "B-mode" and figured out with others that we could probe the era of inflation with the Cosmic Microwave Background in 1996-1997. 30 years later, we (and others) are on the hunt for them!

A series of swirly black lines are overlaid on a blue-green background with a yellow band in the middle, distorting it. This image won a 2019 wikimedia competition for science images. Uros' explanation: "Scientists believe our Universe started with a rapid expansion, during which tiny quantum seeds were imprinted into the fabric of spacetime, leading in time to creation of galaxies, stars and planets, including the Earth. To prove this theory scientists are searching for B-modes, a spiral type of polarization imprinted in the microwave sky. However, Milky Way emits dust, which is also polarized, and scientists must learn how to distinguish the two signals. This image was created by taking dust emission as measured from the Planck satellite and converting its intensity into a polarization pattern. The bright yellow band is Milky Way as seen in the microwave sky. A B-mode was imprinted into a single spot by locally rotating the dust polarization pattern by 45 degrees. A hilly landscape was added at the bottom to represent that many of the B-mode experiments are ground based, in places from Antarctica to Atacama desert in Chile. This picture is a great example of a teamwork in science and could not have been made without the input of numerous people. Special thanks to the Planck satellite team who observed and made public the data this is based on, Susan Clark for the original inspiration, Yu Feng for the data processing and Andrej Berlot for the post-processing. "A photograph, seen from behind and under, an SO Small Aperture Telescope (SAT) is pointing at the night sky. It is a white cylinder attached to a mount and partly covered by a tarp. A large vertical jackscrew controls the elevation orientation of the telescope. Thick red cables can be seen exiting from the side of the telescope at the edge of the image.Uros Seljak, standing behind a podium speaking into a microphone. He is a White man with brown hair and greying temples wearing a dark grey suit, a white shirt and a blue-grey tie. Behind him are three flags: EU, Slovenian, and the University of Ljubljana.
Simons Observatory@simonsobservatory.org · 4mo ago

Congrats to Simons Observatory members Colin Hill and @msyriac.bsky.social for receiving the Breakthrough New Horizons Prize in Physics for work on CMB lensing! Our LAT is raring to go and image the gravitational lensing of the CMB deeper than ever before! (Credit: SO/O. Kusiak/K. Perez Sarmiento)

A map of blobs in grayscale, that correspond to the gravitational lensing measured by the SO LAT in a small part of the sky (the edges of the image give the dimensions in degrees. The whole patch is roughly 15x45 degrees
Penn Arts & Sciences@sas.upenn.edu · 4mo ago

Congrats to Mathew Madhavacheril of Physics & Astronomy on receiving the New Horizons in Physics Prize funded by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. The recognition comes in honor of his work around advances in cosmic microwave background (CMB) and supernovae cosmology. @upenn.edu

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory@vrubinobs.bsky.social · 5mo ago

How many viscachas is too many? Answer: more than we can fit here—because this still isn’t enough! 🐾 These fluffy mountain summit residents have been hopping, sunbathing, and keeping an eye on us while NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory captures the cosmos! 🔭🧪

Two fluffy rodents with long ears and bushy tail among rocks in golden sunset lightTwo fluffy rodents with long ears and bushy tail on rocks.Four fluffy rodents with long ears and bushy tail among grass and rocks.A fluffy rodent with long ears and bushy tail among rocks looks at the camera
Simons Observatory@simonsobservatory.org · 5mo ago

POV: You're an observatory 🔭 in a remote part of the world but somehow aren't worried about this whole "oil price spike" thing. An important part of our Advanced Simons Observatory grant was to make our observatory mostly #SolarPowered Image credit: Dr Benjamin Schmitt, U Penn

The photovoltaïc array of the Simons Observatory nearly complete in the Atacama Desert. Mountains are visible in the distance of the earthy landscape, small clouds drift in the blue sky above.
Simons Observatory@simonsobservatory.org · 5mo ago

The Northeastern US wasn't the only place with snowfall last weekend... It also snowed at our site, nestled at 5200m above sea level in the Atacama desert! ¡El fin de semana pasado nevó en nuestro observatorio, situado a 5200 m sobre el nivel del mar en el desierto de Atacama!🔭 Image: Niklas Tampier

Steps in the snow. In the background, some funnel-like structures can be seen set against a blue sky.
Simons Observatory@simonsobservatory.org · 8mo ago

On the fourth day of CMBmas, my telescope gave to me: Four Stokes components Three working SATs 🔭 Two optics designs and a low PWV Any light can be decomposed into the four so-called Stokes parameters: total intensity I, two linear polarizations Q and U, and circular V. SO measures I, Q and U.

A diagram illustrating the three possible polarizations of light. The x and y axes of an electrical field are labelled in black. For light coming out of the screen towards you, the linear polarization Q, in red, makes a + cross shape along those x and y axes, U, in blue, is rotated by 45° and makes an x shape. A green circle with two arrows on it attempts to represent circular polarization V.
Simons Observatory@simonsobservatory.org · 8mo ago

On the third day of CMBmas, my telescope gave to me: Three working SATs 🔭 Two optical designs and a low PWV Last winter, we fixed a cracked lens in one of our Small Aperture Telescopes. We put it back on its' platform and it's now scanning the sky again. (Timelapse made by Josh Borrow, UPenn)

Simons Observatory@simonsobservatory.org · 8mo ago

On the first day of CMBmas, the observatory Had a low PWV Telescopes like us are inconvenienced by water in the atmosphere emitting/blocking microwaves (same reason why a microwave heats food well). Luckily, the #Atacama desert has one of the lowest Precipitable Water Vapour amounts Earth.

A Mercator map of the world with the countries outlined. The map is mostly white, but Greenland, Tibet, the Andean Plateau and Antarctica are colored in various shades of blue. The legend indicates this means lower amounts of precipitable water vapor. The color scale goes from 0 to 5, with antarcitca the closest to 0, Greenland , Chile and Tibet sit between 1 and 2.5
Simons Foundation@simonsfoundation.org · 11mo ago

Excited to announce the latest recipients of our Targeted Grants in Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MPS) and Targeted Grants to Institutions: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/27/2025-targeted-grants-to-institutes-and-targeted-grants-in-mps-announced/ #science #math

2025 Targeted Grants to Institutes and Targeted Grants in MPS Announced

The Simons Foundation announced the latest recipients of the Targeted Grants in MPS and Targeted Grants to Institutions.

simonsfoundation.org

Simons Observatory@simonsobservatory.org · last yr.

Cool results from our cousins at the South Pole Telescope! 🔭 With our Large Aperture Telescope, we hope to reach a similarly exquisite sensitivity as they do on their green patch over a large sky area (that I crudely outlined in blue).

An oval projection of the full night sky, with the galaxy forming a wispy horseshoe figure through it. several trapezoids of color cover different parts of it. The original caption reads: "FIG. 3. Footprints of the SPT-3G surveys—Main (green filled area), Summer (orange filled area), and Wide (red filled area)—shown alongside the ACT DR6 survey mask (blue solid line). We show Galactic dust as measured by Planck in the background [45] and indicate the most contaminated region with the Planck GAL080 mask as shown in gray shading with a white border. This work is based on observations of the SPT-3G Main field. The combination of the SPT-3G Main, SPT-3G Summer, and SPT-3G Wide fields will constitute the Ext-10k field, which will probe 25% of the sky with low noise and high resolution."
South Pole Telescope@sptelescope.bsky.social · last yr.

SPT-3G D1 Webinar: CMB TT/TE/EE power spectra and cosmology from 2019-2020 observations from SPT-3G Main Field - Now Live!!! youtu.be/TRJ5sfAwnao @NSF @doescience @UChicago #NSFfunded #DOEfunded #Antarctica

Atacama Cosmology Telescope y Simons Observatory en Español@act-simonsobs-es.bsky.social · last yr.

Hoy se cumplen 60 años de la publicación del descubrimiento del Fondo Cósmico de Microondas por Arno Penzias y Robert Wilson! 🥳 Compartimos la columna de nuestro investigador @csifon.bsky.social resumiendo la importancia de este descubrimiento

Cristóbal Sifón@csifon.bsky.social · last yr.

Mi columna en Emol sobre el cumpleaños 60 del Fondo Cósmico de Microondas y el rol central que ha tenido y seguirá teniendo Chile en la exploración del origen y la evolución del Universo #astronomia comentarista.emol.com/2578227/3332...