MINERVA: Hunting for Earth's Twin
June 10, 2015
Astronomers are celebrating the dedication of a new planet-hunting telescope known as Minerva. Installed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona, the Minerva project is an array of low-cost telescopes that are designed to discover planets orbiting stars other than the sun.
Penn Telescope Minerva-Red Joins Hunt for Earth’s Twin
May 19, 2015 • By Evan Lerner
University of Pennsylvania astronomers are celebrating the dedication of a new planet-hunting telescope known as Minerva-Red. Installed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona, Minerva-Red is part of the Minerva project, an array of low-cost telescopes that are designed to discover planets orbiting stars other than the sun.
UM's new telescope searching the stars
December 21, 2014 6:20 pm • By Dillon Kato
From his lab in Missoula, Nate McCrady watches the stars.
The University of Montana associate professor of astronomy and his team of research students received a $1.125 million grant from NASA last year.
UM One Step Closer to Discovering New Worlds
Decmeber 18, 2014
“First light” marked a new dawn for University of Montana astronomy on Dec. 16.
UM astrophysics Associate Professor Nate McCrady, along with a team of researchers, achieved “first light” on Tuesday – a term used to describe successfully taking first observations from a telescope.
NASA grant launches UM effort to discover new worlds
January, 2014 • By Cary Shimek
To a certain extent, UM’s planned telescope to search for planets around other stars can be traced to pickup basketball games a dozen years ago at the University of California, Berkeley.
Back then, UM Associate Professor Nate McCrady was a graduate student who regularly met with other budding astrophysicists to shoot hoops. They would play on university courts or parks in the Berkeley Hills overlooking campus.
UM to join hunt for Earth-like planets
July 31, 2013 11:00 am • By Martin Kidston
Astronomers last month detected a planet 63 light years from Earth passing in front of its star. On this distant world, daytime temperatures soar to 2,000 degrees while 4,500 mph winds drive storms that rain glass.
It’s doubtful that planet HD 189733B is a candidate for life – at least as we know it – outside our solar system. So in the meantime, the quest for something more Earth-like continues.
“Planets are absolutely everywhere,” said Nate McCrady, associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Montana. “There are 2 billion planets in our galaxy alone. There’s got to be something else out there.”
July 23, 2013 • By Sally Mauk
NASA recently awarded a 1.125 million dollar grant to researchers at the University of Montana to explore, among other things, whether there is life on other planets.
UM will join with three other universities around the country to take part in "Project Minerva", which will use an array of four telescopes to research so-called "exoplanets".
Minerva receives support from Mt. Cuba
05.30.2013
Contributions to Minerva have been gratefully accepted from the Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation. The Minerva team wishes to thank the foundation for their generous support of the project. The Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation also operates the Mount Cuba Observatory located at 1610 Hillside Mill Road,Greenville, Delaware, USA. This observatory is home to a 0.6-meter telescope used by the Delaware Astronomical Society, the University of Delaware, and the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope. Associated with the Observatory is the Mt. Cuba Astronomy Group (MCAG). The MCAG is composed of interested amateurs and engages in astronomy education and public outreach. Meetings are held the second Tuesday of each month at the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory.
Unblinking Baby Telescopes Will Hunt Exoplanets for Cheap
January 10, 2013 • By Adam Mann
LONG BEACH, California — A new ground-based telescope project named Minerva will be dedicated to uncovering extrasolar planets in our nearby stellar neighborhood. Given its small size and relatively low cost, it could represent a way for astronomers to produce top-notch science at a time when money is scarce.
Minerva is a grassroots planet-hunting machine
September 06, 2012
Like a lot of other astronomers, Caltech’s John Johnson is interested in looking for exoplanets that could be like Earth. And like a lot of those astronomers, he’s found that instruments that can help in the search are not only hard to find, but tend to be booked for months on end by scientists doing non-exoplanet observations. Building new, large telescopes for planet-hunting takes years of planning, design, and funding coordination efforts...
MINERVA launches University of Montana into other worlds
August 22, 2012 • By Matthew Frank
It’s about 10:30 on the night of Fri., Aug. 17, and Nate McCrady is standing next to the Blue Mountain Observatory, perched at about 6,300 feet southwest of Missoula. McCrady, a professor in the University of Montana’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, trains his laser pointer at stars and constellations in the clear night sky and explains things to the several up-lookers circled around him, such as that a star called Iota Draconis, 100 light-years away in the dragon-shaped constellation Draco, has a Jupiter-like gassy planet orbiting it. It’s an exoplanet, a planet that orbits a star outside our solar system...