Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2021

39 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021 ASTRO PUBLISHING A n image of the spectroscopic observations of the Sun made by NEID. NEID’s spec- tral coverage ex- tends significantly redder and bluer than the limits of human vision, en- abling it to ob- serve many critical spectral lines. NEID’s design en- ables high spectral resolution, large wavelength cover- age, and exquisite stability. [Dani Zemba, Guðmun- dur Stefánsson, and the NEID Team] 25 cm/s reachable by NEID with a single observation. Nevertheless, by suitably combining a good number of observations, it is possible to overcome that limit and recognize planet-star systems more similar to ours. To be able to do this, it is es- sential that the NEID measurements remain stable during the entire ex- pected period of operation, at least five years. For this purpose, its optics are kept at a stable temperature within a thousandth of a degree! In the long commissioning phase of NEID, the so-called “first light” was obviously also taken. The re- searchers chose the symbolic star 51 Pegasi, the first Sun-like star around which, in 1995, a planet was discov- ered. This measurement was an easy task for the new spectrograph, as the orbiting planet has a mass equal to about half that of Jupiter. Now that NEID has become fully operational and 60% of the WIYN telescope’s observation time has been booked in conjunction with the spectrograph, researchers are expecting great results. We are not referring only to the NEID team, as the instrument is, unlike other spec- trographs of its capabilities, avail- able to the entire international astronomical community regardless of the home scientific institution. “I can’t wait to see the results we and our colleagues around the world will produce over the next few years, from discovering new, rocky planets, to measuring the compositions of ex- oplanetary atmospheres, to measur- ing the shapes and orientations of planetary orbits, to characterization of the physical pro- cesses of these plan- ets’ host stars,” said Jason Wright. But NEID will not “just” observe dis- tant stars, it will also observe the Sun through a small solar telescope that the NEID team has specially developed, as stated by Eric Ford, professor of as- tronomy and astrophysics and di- rector of Penn State’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds: “Thanks to the NEID solar telescope funded by the Heising-Simons Foun- dation, NEID won’t sit idle during the day. Instead, it will carry out a second mission, collecting a unique dataset that will enhance the ability of machine learning algorithms to recognize the signals of low-mass planets during the nighttime.” NEID, therefore, also marks the re- turn of solar observations to Kitt Peak, which was suspended in 2017 when renovations began on the his- toric Dunn Solar Telescope. !