Telescope

The starlings have been evicted, and the Maryland Science Center's long-neglected rooftop observatory in Baltimore is once again providing dramatic views of whatever stars and planets manage to shine through the city's nighttime glare."

Jason Kalirai doesn't just reach for the stars. He pulls them close and studies them - and encourages others to do so, as well. For two years, Kalirai, an award-winning astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, worked with the Hubble Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope in history. Now he is the deputy project scientist developing Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be 100 times more powerful. "Astronomy is my passion, and the James Webb Space Telescope is the most exciting astronomy project ever," said Kalirai, 35, of Ellicott City.

A $2,000 telescope, powerful enough to enable the viewer to observe mountain ranges and shadows on the moon, was stolen from the enclosed back porch of a Linwood home Sunday night.Richard J. King, who received the the electric clock-drive telescope as a Christmas present in 1991, said it was mounted on a self-leveling sealed tripod.Mr. King said the Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope has an 8-inch reflector that brings Jupiter, the largest planet of the solar system and the fifth in distance from the sun, into view at the size of a quarter.

Jason Kalirai doesn't just reach for the stars. He pulls them close and studies them — and encourages others to do so as well. Kalirai, 35, is an award-winning astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. For two years, he worked with the Hubble Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope in history, and for the past 2 1/2 years has been the deputy project scientist developing Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be 100 times more powerful than Hubble.

A month after undergoing the most sweeping tune-up in its 12-year history, the Hubble Space Telescope has been given a clean bill of health by NASA scientists. Preliminary tests showed that extensive new hardware installed by astronauts last month in a series of five grueling spacewalks appears to be working flawlessly. The centerpiece of last month's mission was a new electrical system and a state-of-the art camera that promises a tenfold improvement in the $2 billion telescope's ability to find distant objects.

STUDENTS AT Glenelg Country School soon will be able to take a close look at stars and other celestial wonders. Thanks to a gift from the Gould family, the school is the owner of one of the most powerful telescopes in Maryland. Plans have been made to use the telescope as the focal point for a comprehensive astronomy curriculum from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The telescope was presented Saturday during a Chinese New Year celebration at the school. The crowd of 175 people included current and former faculty, trustees, headmasters and founders of the school -- people who had played a major role in the growth of the school during its 46-year history.

MOUNT MAUNA KEA, Hawaii -- In a mountaintop ceremony bringing together a Japanese princess and members of the Hawaiian royal order wearing crimson robes, Japan inaugurated on Friday what many astronomers expect will soon prove to be the world's most powerful land-based telescope. Experts who gathered under a dazzling sun at the 13,796-foot summit of Mount Mauna Kea, Hawaii's tallest mountain, said the 26.9-foot instrument, known by the Japanese name for the constellation Pleiades, or Subaru, would help propel Japan from astronomical obscurity into the highest echelons of space-observing nations.

WASHINGTON - A powerful new telescope technology is allowing astronomers to produce celestial images from the ground that are as sharp as those snapped by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Called adaptive optics, the new technology cancels out distortions caused by turbulence in Earth's atmosphere by changing the shape of the telescope's flexible mirror more than 1,000 times per second. With a growing number of big mountaintop telescopes now fitted with adaptive optics, scientists say, there should be an acceleration in the search for knowledge about the formation of planetary systems like ours and for evidence that life has evolved around other stars.

The trouble with cheap amateur telescopes is that you can't see much through them. Expensive telescopes really do bring the heavens into your back yard. But they're, well, really expensive. Mike Paolucci is betting that frustrated stargazers will spend $50 a year for access to a telescope bigger and better than anything they could ever hope to buy. Especially if it came with a guide, and they never had to stand in the cold to use it. Paolucci, 33, a self-described "serial entrepreneur" based in New York City, is preparing for a Christmas Day launch of Slooh.

At the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the messages of sympathy have been pouring in for days. No one has died, exactly. But NASA's decision last week to cancel the fifth and final space shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope has doomed the revered orbiting observatory to an early demise. And that has triggered real grief among astronomers stricken by the loss of future scientific discoveries, the derailing of their scientific quests and perhaps their jobs. "We have people who are emotionally all over the place," said John MacKenty, 46, the institute's group leader for one of two new Hubble instruments grounded by the decision.

Future 'Google for Genealogists' The Anne Arundel Genealogical Society meets at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 3 at Severna Park United Methodist Church, 731 Benfield Road. Refreshments and networking follow the meeting. Information: 410-760-9679 or aagensoc.org . Concert Banjoist Jayme Stone's "Room of Wonders" tour makes a stop at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 9 at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, 801 Chase St. in Annapolis. Tickets are $15; $10 for hall members. Information: 410-280-5640 or marylandhall.org . Lecture Donna Hill Staton, a member of the Maryland Board of Education, will give the keynote address, "Protecting Our Children, Protecting Our Future," at 9:30 a.m. Jan. 12 in St. John's College's Francis Scott Key Auditorium, 60 College Ave. in Annapolis.

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured distant reaches of the universe over the past 22 years, but with the end of the space shuttle program, has not been repaired since 2009. A filmmaker is challenging that decision with the documentary "Saving Hubble" and will speak in Baltimore on Tuesday. David Gaynes will speak at the Space Telescope Science Institute with his message about saving Hubble, which is expected to continue operating only through next year. NASA is focused on replacing Hubble with the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.

Half a century ago, a nearby cluster of stars appeared to astronomers as a single glowing ball of gas. As recently as 15 years ago, scientists realized it was in fact a cluster of stars but were convinced they all must have formed at the same time and with the same composition. Now astronomers at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute have found evidence that one cluster may actually be two, one a million years older than the other, in the process of merging. The clusters are 170,000 light years from Earth in an area known as the Tarantula Nebula.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is holding a family event Wednesday night to teach middle-school-age children about the James Webb Space Telescope. Visitors will learn about the telescope from experts who work on it, and then will be able to build a simple telescope they can take home. The event is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Goddard visitors center in Greenbelt. The Webb telescope is slated to launch around 2018.

Have questions about space and the James Webb Space Telescope? John Mather, a Nobel laureate and scientist working on the telescope, will answer them on Twitter tomorrow. The telescope is slated for a 2018 launch and is seeking to find the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang, determine how they have evolved, observe star formation and investigate potential for life in other planetary systems. Tweet with the hashtag #JWSTscience and follow @NASAWebbTelescp for answers from 2-3 p.m.

Here's something you don't see every day: A house that comes with its own observatory and telescope. The property, on Westview Road in Baltimore's Original Northwood neighborhood, is for sale with an asking price of $389,000. "Stone wing c.1937 houses a vintage telescope within the beautiful copper roofed observatory," notes the listing, which calls it the Telescope House. The seller's real estate agent, JoAnn Moncure, said more than 100 people turned out for the open house last Sunday -- some who live in the area and really, really wanted a look inside.

A billion dollars in projected cost overruns have thrown the $3.5 billion James Webb Space Telescope project into a crisis that could threaten its mission and hundreds of Maryland jobs associated with it. Astronomers designed the 6.8-ton observatory to fly a million miles from the Earth and begin searching in 2011 for the feeble light from the first stars and galaxies that emerged from the darkness after the Big Bang. But with mirror manufacturing under way and $820 million spent, Webb's problems are increasing and scientists are concerned about its future.

Students at Glenelg Country School will soon be able to use a recent gift to explore worlds they may have seen only in textbooks. Yesterday evening, the school celebrated the opening of its new space observatory with a research-quality telescope. In 2000, three children of Kingdon and Mary Gould, who founded the school in 1954, donated the $35,000 instrument in their parents' name. Nearly three years later, Glenelg Country has completed two small structures to house the telescope on its campus in western Howard County.

Take a glimpse of the heavens Tuesday at 8 p.m. The Space Telescope Science Institute is holding its monthly public lecture, and afterward visitors can get a chance to look through the Bloomberg telescope. The opportunity is also open on any Friday night with clear skies, but on the first Tuesday of the month visitors get the opportunity to learn from a scientist, as well. The institute is on Johns Hopkins University's campus at 3799 San Martin Dr.

Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said Wednesday she expects the Senate will pass a budget bill on Tuesday that will include $530 million to continue work toward launch of the Webb Space Telescope in 2018 "and secure America's place in astronomy for the next 50 years. " Speaking at a ribbon-cutting for a new Webb Telescope exhibit at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore, the Democratic senator added that she hopes to have the funding bill "on the president's desk to be signed into law by Thanksgiving.