by J.M. Roe
The universe is big -- really big. And expanding -- really quickly.
This was not always the case, as most theories have it.
It was much, much smaller -- infinitesimally small, by most accounts. And quite stationary, it seems.
How something so inconceivably small has become the biggest thing in the known universe -- that is, the universe itself -- and how it continues to grow at such an alarming rate has been on astronomers' minds for some years now.
Thus they have sleuthed about in the dark and trained telescopes to the heavens, even cast a few into the heavens themselves, to answer what many human beings consider the fundamental question: How did all this come to be? (or words to that effect).
To get a better grasp of the early universe astronomers look to the outer fringes of the universe, which, to us, look like the primitive universe, that is, the universe of 10 billion to 20 billion years ago. To peer into these vast reaches of space, more powerful telescopes are being built.
The Keck Observatory
Currently, the most powerful telescope on Earth (that is, in the known universe) is housed in the Keck Observatory in Kamuela, Hawaii. And here you'll not find a lone fellow in a lab coat with a Popeye-like countenance spying through an eyepiece; you'll find a contemplative band of savants gazing at screens.
The observatory, which became operational last year, is owned and operated by the California Association for Research Astronomy (CARA), a joint venture between the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. It sits atop the 13,000-foot mountain Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii -- a peak above most of the atmosphere's water vapor (which absorbs infrared light from space) and usually free of cloud cover. Currently one tower houses the operational 33-foot telescope. The other tower, scheduled for completion in 1996, will house a similar telescope.
The operational telescope contains a primary mirror formed from 36 hexagonal segments arranged in a mosaic, giving it a honeycomb-like appearance. The segments can be controlled electronically to reshape the whole mirror and create a single, continuous optical surface. The telescope's design itself is relatively traditional: The primary mirror receives light from a heavenly body and directs that light to a focus. But the images are relayed to computer screens, which substitute for eyepieces. What makes the Keck Observatory's telescope so powerful is that it has such a large mirrored surface compared with all the other observatory telescopes.
This design coupled with what some call the best astronomical site on the surface of the Earth give astronomers enough power to see a single candle flame on the surface of the moon.
Supporting the telescope
As could well be imagined, maintaining such a technological marvel is quite an undertaking. That's why the observatory itself has a staff of about 65 people.
"The entire observatory is computerized," said Hilton Lewis, systems manager of the Keck Observatory. "You cannot observe without computers."
And the visiting astronomers to Keck do most of their viewing with Sun Microsystems Sparcstations. The 30 Sun computers at the Keck Observatory are used for instrument control, software development, analysis by astronomers and as the direct server link to the Internet and the Internet browser, Mosaic. Sun computers provide the high-level control of the telescope and the mosaic mirror. Besides the in-house software the observatory staff has developed and constantly upgrades, the Keck staff uses DataViews 9.5 for the telescope's interface.
"We use [Dataviews] for GUI development on top of the user interfaces. In the longer term we'll probably use it for all our sophisticated user interface development... Before we were doing it through X windows. It was very difficult," Lewis said.
Motif Object Dynamics, a feature of DataViews 9.5, allows Keck engineers to encapsulate animated graphics in a standard Motif widget. This provides a smoother integration into existing Motif applications.
Nighttime maintenance
Most of the actual maintenance of the telescope is done during normal business hours, that is when it is daylight -- a time that is maximally suboptimal for peering into the darkness of space. The nature of astronomy is nocturnal, so while the CARA astronomers behold the heavens, the Keck support staff slumber and dream beneath their twinkling splendor.
Well, that is, until something goes wrong.
But thanks to three networked Sun LX computers, Keck support people don't have to somnambulate the 20 miles from their homes up the forbidding and cold cliffs of Mauna Kea just to train the telescope a few degrees to the west. Through a network, Lewis and two other Keck staff members can control many of the telescope's functions from their own homes -- any time.
"You save a lot of trips to the summit," said Al Conrad, senior software engineer at Keck. "Mostly [the LX network] is used to troubleshoot software problems.
The network, which is linked through high-speed Ethernet with PPP telephone cable, provides online support to astronomers using the telescope. For instance, if an astronomer is having difficultly seeing a clear image, he or she can call up an observatory staff member who can call up the image on which the telescope is trained and, from his or her own home, attempt to correct the problem.
"If there is a fault in light, you get a call at two o'clock in the morning. You can log into the system, display images, run the control systems or aspects of it," Lewis said.
What it's seen
In one of the telescope's first observations, astronomers found a surprisingly large amount of a rare and heavier form of hydrogen called deuterium outside our own Milky Way galaxy. This ratio of deuterium to ordinary hydrogen was well within the limits predicted by the Big Bang Theory, lending it further support. The search for this deuterium had been ongoing for years, and its discovery was one of the most significant in cosmology (the study of the origins and evolution of the universe).
Most recently the telescope was trained on Jupiter to watch its fiery and spectacular collision with the pieces of a comet -- an event that understandably received quite a lot of attention from astronomers (and the media).
Suns for the stars
The Keck staff decided to use Sun computers because they are so prevalent in the science community. Also, Lewis said he and the Keck staff were impressed with the price/performance of the computers. What gradually became more important to the Keck observatory, however, was the number of applications its hardware system could support.
"We certainly find that the majority of the applications that we need are available first on Sun and then on later operating systems," Lewis said. "That alone -- the availability of applications software -- is what made us go with Sun."
But whether the observatory staff will use Sun computers with the second telescope, the Keck II, is questionable, Lewis said.
"I think the next generation of telescope instruments for Keck II, which have an order of magnitude more data, will need much faster data reduction environments. In astronomy you're always being driven by data reduction site, that's where the real hard, really heavy number crunching comes in. I imagine the current generation of desktop Suns is not going to be adequate for that."