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In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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| Alternative names | SPECULOOS |
|---|---|
| Location | Chile, Spain |
| Telescope style | infrared telescope  |
| Diameter | 1 m (3 ft 3 in) |
| Website | www |
 Related media on Commons | |
SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) is a project consisting of SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile and SPECULOOS Northern Observatory (SNO) at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife.[1][2]
The SSO consists of four Ritchey–Chrétien telescopes of 1-metre primary aperture, made by ASTELCO. Each telescope is equipped with a NTM-1000 robotic mount and will search for Earth-sized exoplanets around 1000 ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs.[3][4][5][6][7] As of June 2019, the SNO consists of one telescope, but more might be added in the future with up to three telescopes for SNO.[8] SPECULOOS is complemented by SAINT-EX and TRAPPIST.[9]
Ultra-cool dwarf stars and brown dwarfs have small radii, causing the transits caused by planets to be deeper. This allows the detection of terrestrial planets around these dwarfs, which are predicted to be common around brown dwarfs.[10] The TRAPPIST-1 system showed that ultra-cool dwarfs form terrestrial planets in the habitable zone. For brown dwarfs, it was predicted that 175 of these objects need to be monitored to find one system with transiting planets.[11]
During the survey operation, each telescope will observe one target for about 10 nights. This kind of observation is optimized for each target to find exoplanets in the habitable zone. To observe 500 targets in the southern hemisphere, 1200 nights or 5 years are needed. The continuous observation of one target is needed to find these exoplanets in the habitable zone around ultra-cool dwarf stars. Such planets are expected to have short transit durations, which can be small as 15 minutes.[12]
The system of SPECULOOS – South (SSO) comprises four telescopes called Europa, Io, Callisto, and Ganymede. The telescopes are named after the Galilean moons that orbit the planet Jupiter, the most massive planet in the Solar System. The first telescope (Europa) saw its first light in April 2017.[13] The second telescope (Io) began operations in October 2017.[14] As of December 2019, all SPECULOOS – South telescopes are operational.[1] ESO released first light images of SPECULOOS – South on the 2018-12-05. The telescopes took images of the Carina Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula, and the spiral galaxy Messier 83.[2] Artemis is the first telescope for SPECULOOS – North (SNO); it began operations on June 20, 2019.[1]
The robotic observations of each of the four telescopes is controlled by the program ACP Expert.[15] Each telescope is equipped with an Andor Peltier-cooled deeply depleted 2k × 2k CCD camera, and the telescopes have a 12×12-arcminute field of view.[12]
The four 1-meter-diameter telescopes will be equipped with cameras sensitive in the near-infrared, the wavelength range in which ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs emit most of their light. The detectors are optimized for 700 to 1000 nm wavelengths, to observe ultracool dwarfs with a J-band magnitude of 14 or brighter at good seeing conditions.[12]
SPECULOOS involves scientists from the University of Liège (Belgium), the University of Birmingham (UK), the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge (UK), the University of Bern (Swiss), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, and the King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia), under the leadership of Michaël Gillon of the University of Liège. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) supports and hosts the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) at the Paranal Observatory.[2][9]
As with the other space observation projects of the University of Liège like TRAPPIST, the name Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars makes up a backronym referring to a Belgian food: in this case, the spiced biscuit known as Speculoos.
The first light data of the SPECULOOS telescopes revealed the eclipsing binary brown dwarf 2M1510A, which is only the second eclipsing binary brown dwarf found so far.[16] The data by SPECULOOS did help to characterise low-mass eclipsing binaries and plays an important part in the follow-up of a new class of rapidly rotating low-mass stars.[17]
SPECULOOS was involved in the discovery of the exoplanet K2-135b, the exoplanets around L 98-59, and the planetary system TOI-178.[17][18] SAINT-EX, which is part of the SPECULOOS project, helped in the discovery of the planets around TOI-1266.[17]
In 2022, the discovery of two super-Earths, one in the habitable zone, around LP 890-9 using SPECULOOS was announced.[19] This system is also designated SPECULOOS-2, with TRAPPIST-1 being SPECULOOS-1.[20] In 2024, a short-period Earth-sized planet was announced around the ultra-cool dwarf SPECULOOS-3 (LSPM J2049+3336).[21]
| System | Star | Planet | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Dist | SpT | Temp | Radius (R☉) |
Pl | Period (days) | Radius (R🜨) |
| TRAPPIST-1[22] (SPECULOOS-1) |
40.66±0.04 | M8V | 2566±26 | 0.1192(13) | b | 1.510826(6) | 1.116+0.014 −0.012 |
| c | 2.421937(18) | 1.097+0.014 −0.012 | |||||
| d | 4.049219(26) | 0.788+0.011 −0.010 | |||||
| e | 6.101013(35) | 0.920+0.013 −0.012 | |||||
| f | 9.207540(32) | 1.045+0.013 −0.012 | |||||
| g | 12.352446(54) | 1.129+0.015 −0.013 | |||||
| h | 18.772866(214) | 0.755±0.014 | |||||
| LP 890-9[20] (SPECULOOS-2) |
105.4±0.1 | M6V | 2850±75 | 0.1556(86) | b | 2.7299025(40) | 1.320+0.053 −0.027 |
| c | 8.457463(24) | 1.367+0.055 −0.039 | |||||
| SPECULOOS-3[21] (LSPM J2049+3336) |
54.63±0.04 | M6.5V | 2800±29 | 0.1230(22) | b | 0.71912603(57) | 0.977±0.022 |
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Speculaas or speculoos is a biscuit with origins in the historical region of the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands). In the Dutch language, producers and vendors of these biscuits usually distinguish between two primary variants: speculaas [speːkyˈlaːs] refers to the more traditional variant, made with a mix of various spices, which is nowadays most popular in the Netherlands; speculoos [speːkyˈloːs] refers to a Belgian variant that omits the traditional spices in favour of caramelized sugar for flavour, and which is nowadays the most common variant in Belgium and worldwide. In common parlance these distinctions are not always made as strictly, with many Flemish people using the term speculoos to refer to both. Also in French there is usually no distinction made, with the term spéculoos [spekylos] being used for both variants (less commonly spelled spéculos or spéculaus). In German, local variants similar to Dutch speculaas are known as Spekulatius [ʃpekuˈlaːtsi̯ʊs] , whereas Belgian speculoos is instead sold as Karamellgebäck ("caramel biscuits"). In the 21st century, Belgian caramelized speculoos has become increasingly well-known worldwide by the commercialized name Biscoff ( BISS-koff), produced by Lotus Bakeries.
SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) is a project consisting of SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile and SPECULOOS Northern Observatory (SNO) at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife. The SSO consists of four Ritchey–Chrétien telescopes of 1-metre primary aperture, made by ASTELCO. Each telescope is equipped with a NTM-1000 robotic mount and will search for Earth-sized exoplanets around 1000 ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs. As of June 2019, the SNO consists of one telescope, but more might be added in the future with up to three telescopes for SNO. SPECULOOS is complemented by SAINT-EX and TRAPPIST.
SPECULOOS-3 b is an Earth-sized exoplanet, orbiting the ultra-cool red dwarf star SPECULOOS-3. It is relatively close to Earth, at a distance of 55 light-years. SPECULOOS-3 b takes only about 17 hours to complete an orbit around SPECULOOS-3, and, because of that proximity, it receives very high levels of radiation and is tidally locked, meaning that one side of the planet always faces its host star. Its discovery was made using the SPECULOOS project, and announced in May 2024 in the academic journal Nature Astronomy. The host star of SPECULOOS-3 b is SPECULOOS-3 (LSPM J2049+3336, TIC 230741378), an ultra-cool red dwarf star in the constellation Cygnus, with just one tenth of the Sun's mass, 13% of the size and 0.09% of its luminosity.
SPECULOOS-3, also known as LSPM J2049+3336, is a red dwarf star (spectral type M6.5) located 54.6 light-years (16.7 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It is one of the smallest known stars, and is much cooler, dimmer and smaller than the Sun, having 0.1 times the mass, 0.08% the Sun's luminosity, and an effective temperature of 2,800 K (2,530 °C), which is less than half of the Sun's temperature (5,772 K). It is orbited by one known exoplanet, and is the second ultra-cool dwarf discovered to have a planetary system, after TRAPPIST-1.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
