News items, conference presentations, and public data-release updates are collected here.
The MDW Hα Sky Survey began in May 2016, and the team completed the survey observations just before the 10-year mark. To celebrate the milestone, team members gathered in New York City at Columbia University and reflected on a decade of wide-field Hα observing.
The gathering also looked ahead to the future of the survey, including upcoming data releases, new science results, broader collaborations, and many more exciting things to come.
Noor Aftab and Andrew Zhang attended the 245th AAS meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. The team presented the first version of Data Release 1, covering the northern sky, through both a talk and an iPoster.
Abstracts are available for the talk and the iPoster. The digital poster session can also be viewed here.
Version 2 of Data Release 0 introduced improved astrometric solutions, a larger source catalog, and updated flux calibrations.
The revised catalog is available on the catalog page, and the updated instrumental, calibrated, and star-removed image products are listed on the images page.
Pavel Karas of the Brno Observatory and Planetarium in Czechia contacted the team about using MDW data in the observatory’s 33-foot-diameter astrosphere exhibit. The final installation combined MDW material with Gaia, RSA SkyExplorer, and astrophotography by Gerald Rhemann.
Additional exhibit information is available from the Brno Observatory and the Festival Planet Brno.
Research by the team was featured on LinkNYC kiosks across New York City, highlighting how the Milky Way would appear if the eye could directly see warm ionized gas traced by Hα emission.
Noor Aftab presented MDW survey work at the AAS meeting in New Orleans. The team also used the meeting to release DR0, the first public data release from the survey.
The conference poster can be viewed here. Columbia’s coverage of the DR0 release is available here.
