The Sky's not the limit for Canadians

August 2007 - May 2008

The Summer of MOST: 2007

February - May: Four months of new discoveries, by MOST and by CoRoT

January 2007: More exciting MOST results

September 29th: 250th Anniversary of University of Vienna

July - October: More MOST publications

June 30th: MOST telescope's 3rd anniversary!

March - June 2006: More data and publications made available to the public

Search for Earth-sized planets around another star

delta Ceti: First scientific observations made by MOST

First scientific results from the MOST Startracker field

June-November 2005: Novel Milestones for MOST
New modes of operation, new data shared with the world.

May 2005: MOST Results Announced at CASCA 2005 Conference
More surprises from the world's smallest space telescope.

January 2004 - April 2005: More Science, First MOST Data Released Publicly
Highlights of MOST Science operations in its first year.

July 2003 - January 2004: Flexing the MOST Muscles
Milestones of MOST's commissioning phase.

January - June 2003: Final Steps to Space
Final testing and launch of Canada's first space telescope.

2001-2002: Bringing It All Together
Assembly of the MOST space telescope, and the evolution of its mission.

1996-2000: A Star Watcher is Born
Proposal and development of the concepts that would shape the MOST Project.

August 27th, 2008 THE SKY’S NOT THE LIMIT FOR CANADIANS - Amateur astronomers win time on the MOST space telescope

Two Canadian amateur stargazers will trade in their backyard telescopes for one above their backyards... 820 kilometres above their backyards. Last year, the MOST team created an opportunity to make MOST mean "My Own Space Telescope". Amateur astronomers and students across Canada were invited to submit proposals for science to be done from orbit. The MOST Science Team has just selected the first two winners: David Gamey, from Toronto, who inspires his Scout packs to look to the stars, and Gordon Sarty, from Saskatoon, whose day job is to peer into the human brain.

“It’s like a cosmic version of the Olympics,” says MOST Mission Scientist Dr. Jaymie Matthews. “The Beijing Olympics had the slogan ‘One World, One Dream.’ Our slogan could be ‘One Universe, Many Dreams’. Ordinary Canadians have proven themselves to be gold medalists reaching a podium which rises to the stars.”

David Gamey chose as his MOST target one of the brightest stars in Canada's winter nightsky, a red supergiant about 800 times bigger than the Sun.

The name of the star, Betelgeuse, may not look familiar, but when you hear it spoken aloud, you'll recognise it as the title of the movie "Beetlejuice". Gamey, an amateur astronomer who teaches basic astronomy to Cubs, Scouts and youth groups, found that Betelgeuse (in the shoulder of the constellation Orion the Hunter) is one of the most popular stars he talks about in his training sessions.

"Cubs are fascinated by this bright star, asking questions like: When will it explode? Will our Sun turn into a supergiant like Betelgeuse? Does it have any planets?" says Gamey. "In a way, Canadian kids are my collaborators on this proposal, because Betelgeuse means something to them. It's a perfect candidate to bridge the curiosities of young people and scientists through the amazing capabilities of MOST."

Betelgeuse is near the end of its life, and this star has lived that life in the fast lane, with a life span maybe less than a hundredth of the Sun's. "MOST will look for subtle vibrations in Betelgeuse that can tell astronomers its true mass and age," explains Prof. Matthews. The space telescope will also check for spots at the surface of the star. "It's the stellar equivalent of acne," jokes Matthews. "Or maybe liver spots, since this star is in its senior years. We'll be conducting a medical examination of a star in its last millennia before dying in a supernova explosion."

Gordon Sarty's proposal has a title that sounds like something a real rocket scientist would write: "Spins and Orbital Debris in the Microquasar LS 5039."

Picture a hot star - 23 times more massive than our Sun – locked in an orbit with a black hole. The winds of gas from the star – like the much gentler solar wind that triggers the Northern Lights – spiral toward the black hole and their death cries emerge as gamma rays. LS 5039 is called a microquasar because it looks like a miniature version of quasars: black holes in the centres of distant galaxies. Understanding LS 5039 – practically our neighbour compared to quasars billions of light years distant – may help us understand the very first galaxies that formed soon after the Big Bang.

“My 5-year-old daughter Darien gave me a hug when I told her the news that I’d been selected,” says Sarty, a member of the Saskatoon Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) and an expert on brain activity and MRI at the University of Saskatchewan. Sarty has been an amateur astronomer since he was 9 years old watching the Moon landings. “I’ve been observing variable stars for almost twenty years using a homemade telescope and my eyeball,” explains Sarty. “It feels like a step up – way up – to observe a microquasar with Canada’s space telescope.”

Sarty suggested that MOST could look for the subtle dimming of light as knots of gas pass in front of the LS 5039 star en route to oblivion. MOST data will enable scientists to use LS 5039 as a cosmic laboratory to study how gas is transferred from an ordinary star to a black hole, and how the star's magnetic field affects that escaping gas, teaching us lessons about our own Sun and its solar wind.

The MOST Science Team also gave an "Honourable Mention" to Jocelyn Larouche, of Jonquiere, Quebec, who proposed that MOST monitor a star located in front of a rich star-forming nebula, a cloud of gas and dust where stars are being born. His proposal to search for planets around this star would be a long shot – astronomical odds, so to speak – so it was not selected this time. According to Matthews, "This star may be an intriguing target for future space missions, and Jocelyn deserves recognition for his insight and imagination."

Prof. Matthews considers this initiative a win-win situation for Canadian science. "It’s a great way to help the public relate to space research. And the quality of the proposals means that it has actually expanded the scientific potential of Canada's space telescope in directions we as the designers never imagined."

There were other worthy proposals, which are still in the running for the future. The door remains open for other aspiring skygazers from across Canada to submit ideas for the MOST space telescope. Just use the ‘MOST = My Own Space Telescope’ link on our welcome page to find helpful on-line submission tools.

August - Present

MOST SCIENTIFIC HIGHLIGHTS SINCE AUGUST 2007

Fourteen papers have appeared in print or been accepted in the last nine months. One was featured on the cover of the November issue of The Astronomical Journal. Here's some of what we've been doing with MOST in that time:

> Detection of two new Slowly Pulsating Be stars - a new class of pulsating variable stars which was discovered by MOST. UBC Ph.D. student Chris Cameron and Japanese theorist Hideyuki Saio led the effort to show how the pulsation frequencies of these stars can tell us how hot massive stars are spinning. This same duo also led the discovery of g-modes (buoyancy waves) in the massive star beta Canis Minoris - the coolest member of the class in which this type of pulsation has been observed.

> The fact that the Wolf-Rayet star HD 165763 - a precursor to a supernova - is remarkably constant has important implications for the understanding of how and why such stars pulsate. Tony Moffat (MOST Science Team member at the Universit\'e de Montr\'eal and Sergey Marchenko of Western Kentucky University) led the study.

> The "hot Jupiter" orbiting closely around the star tau Bootis is triggering spots and flares in the stellar atmosphere beneath it, as MOST Science Team member Gordon Walker, former UBC undergrad and current University of Toronto Ph.D. student Bryce Croll, MOST Mission Scientist Jaymie Matthews and others on the MOST team have found. MOST is likely seeing the effects of tangling of the magnetic fields of the planet and star.

> Astronomers can measure the magnetic fields at the surfaces of other stars, but MOST is testing what those fields are like below the surface. University of Vienna graduate students Michael Gruberbauer and Dan Huber, working with theorist Hideyuki Saio and the MOST team, have used the vibrations of the magnetic pulsating stars gamma Equulei and 10 Aquilae to tell us what are the magnetic field strengths and geometries in the interiors of these stars - otherwise hidden from telescopic eyes.

> The heavily spotted star HD 189733 also hosts a transiting exoplanet. Eliza Miller-Ricci (a Harvard Ph.D. student) and Bryce Croll (a U of Toronto Ph.D. student) have performed separate analyses - timing the transits of the planet and mapping the spots on the star - to give us a unique glimpse at this system, including a sensitive search for Earth-mass and Earth-size planets.

> UBC undergraduate student Reka Moldovan and MOST Mission Scientist Jaymie Matthews have started a search for asteroids around the star HD 209458 based on MOST photometry. They are looking for the equivalent of the Trojan swarms of asteroids found camped out ahead of and behind Jupiter in its orbit in our Solar System.

> Red giants vibrate, but their vibrations are more complex than we used to think. Vienna Ph.D. student Thomas Kallinger and MOST Science Team member David Guenther (St. Mary's University) have led investigations of the pulsating red giants HD 20884 and epsilon Ophiuchi which show that they pulsate nonradially - i.e., they don't just expand and contract in the same way in all directions from the stellar centre. The pulsations of HD 20884 were discovered by MOST and the models of these red giants are helping us understand the late stages of the lives of stars like the Sun - looking into our own star's future.

June 9th, 2007 “Boring” light from red dwarf star Gliese 581 means better odds for extraterrestrial life in that planetary system, according to University of British Columbia astronomer Jaymie Matthews. Read the full text here:

"Boring Star May Mean Livelier Planet: UBC Astronomer"

June 30th, 2007

MOST celebrates its fourth birthday today, a day before Canada celebrates the nation’s birthday. And to mark the occasion, the Canadian Space Agency and the MOST Science Team are giving Canadian students, amateur astronomers and stargazing enthusiasts the chance to make their own discoveries with this tiny but powerful space observatory.

The MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars) satellite was launched four years ago today from a Russian cosmodrome, aboard a former Soviet nuclear missile. It was intended to be a one-year mission, but has exceeded every expectation of mission planners since blasting into space. The science MOST has accomplished sometimes sounds more than astromedicine than astrophysics: performing “ultrasound” on stellar embryos, diagnosing the skin complexion and hyperactivity of a pre-teen sun, and taking the pulses of stellar senior citizens. MOST has also begun the search for Terra Nova – looking for Earths around other stars - and the study of weather on planets beyond the Solar System (see also UBC Media Release).

While the exoplanetary science and many other discoveries by MOST were never part of the original mission plan, the Canadian Space Agency and the MOST Team had planned from the start to give ordinary Canadians a chance to observe with their space telescope, 820 km above the Earth. “MOST was nicknamed the “Humble Space Telescope” before launch. It has since become “The Little Telescope That Could”. Now MOST can also stand for “My Own Space Telescope”, announced Dr. Matthews today. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to wonder about the universe, and Canada’s students and amateur astronomers have ‘the right stuff’ to explore those cosmic wonders.”

All Canadians will have the chance to submit proposals for scientific observations with MOST. The MOST Science Team will select one or more of the best proposals that are feasible with the satellite. MOST will then collect the observations and the Team will work with the winners to analyse and publish the results.

Information on MOST capabilities, a target selection tool, and on-line proposal submission form can be found at
"MOST = My Own Space Telescope - Canadians' opportunity to propose MOST science".
So start thinking of the science you might be able to do with Canada's space telescope.

August 10th, 2007 Sometimes two stars can be better than one. MOST was intended to study single stars, but it has discovered previously unrecognised eclipsing binaries, and monitored a binary containing a white dwarf and an active red dwarf star.

Among the MOST guide stars used for spacecraft pointing in June 2006, we found a binary star consisting of two hot massive B-type stars with an orbital period of only 2.27 days. This system, HD 313926, stood out because it has the highest orbital eccentricity among such short-period B-type binaries. The fact that the orbit of HD 313926 has not yet become circular suggests that the system is very young, even compared to other young B stars. The analysis, led by MOST Science Team member Dr. Slavek Rucinski (Director of the David Dunlap Observatory), will appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

In the Hyades star cluster (visible to the eye in the constellation Taurus) is a binary system, V471 Tau, containing a K2 dwarf and a white dwarf. Only ten days of MOST monitoring revealed seven flares of the red dwarf whose energies were among the highest ever observed in that star, despite the fact that the MOST photometry indicated less surface spots than seen in the past. If this star undergoes seven powerful flares in a week and a half when near a minimum in its activity cycle, we wouldn't want to be close to it during maximum activity! Partly simultaneous optical spectroscopy from the David Dunlap Observatory (DDO) indicate that activity is less concentrated on the surface of the red dwarf directly beneath the white dwarf, whose proximity is believed to be a major factor in raising activity on its companion. These results will appear in The Astronomical Journal next month, in a paper with lead authors Krzysztof Z. Kaminski (Astronomical Observatory, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland) and MOST Science Team member Slavek Rucinski.

Both papers can be downloaded from the MOST Science Page and the data will be available soon in the MOST Public Data Archive, accessible via the Science Page.

Image (above right): The Hyades star cluster. Image credit: Palomar Sky Survey

February 13th , 2007



"Click to view larger version of images"

COROT is collecting science. The French/ESA COROT space mission, launched successfully on 27 December 2006, began its first observing run on 3 February. The MOST team sends its warm congratulations to COROT Mission Scientist Annie Baglin and the rest of the COROT team on this great success.

The COROT (COnvection, ROtation & planetary Transits) satellite (depicted in the artist's conception, center picture) joins MOST in orbit to study subtle oscillations in stars for asteroseismology and is now conducting the first comprehensive spacebased search for exoplanets through transits. The images here show the wide field of stars being observed by COROT now (far left), and a closeup of a few of the stellar images on one of the COROT CCDs (far right).

MOST has had a collaborative agreement with COROT in which we shared data and processing techniques in advance to help prepare for COROT operations once it was in space. In one example, we provided early MOST Direct Imaging photometry data to test routines to correct COROT photometry for telescope pointing jitter. The paper describing these tests -- "Jitter Correction Algorithms for the CoRoT Satellite Mission: Validation with Test-Bench Data and MOST On-Orbit Photometry" by Fabio De Oliveira Fialho, Vincent Lapeyrere, Michel Auvergne, Rachel Drummond, Bart Vandenbussche, Conny Aerts, Rainer Kuschnig, and Jaymie Mark Matthews -- was just accepted to appear in The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The paper can be downloaded from the "Technical Publications" section of the Science page of our website.

April 6th, 2007

MOST has expanded its mission to include seismology of red giants. In 2005, MOST monitored the red giant epsilon Ophiuchi for almost a month. Groundbased spectroscopy had revealed that this star is pulsating, but it was impossible to identify which were the real frequencies in this star vs. "aliases" due to the night-day gaps in the data. The MOST photometry detected oscillations with amplitudes as low as 30 parts per million, and no ambiguity in the frequencies. This allows the MOST team of astronomer to constrain the mass and age of this star, and to test the properties of a red giant - the future state of our own Sun when it approaches death. The analysis was carried out by a team led by Caroline Barban (Observatoire de Paris), Jaymie Matthews (UBC, MOST Mission Scientist) and Joris De Ridder (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium). The paper, "Detection of solar-like oscillations in the red giant star epsilon Ophiuchi by MOST spacebased photometry" has just been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The paper can be downloaded from the Science page of this web site, and the data will be available soon in the MOST Public Data Archive, also via the Science page. MOST has observed and detected pulsations in other red giants. Stay tuned for more results very soon.

January 29th, 2007



"Click to view animation"

The MOST team has found that a nearby young star spins in the same complex way that powers a giant dynamo to produce the magnetic field of our Sun. The star, kappa 1 Ceti, is only 30 light years away and just visible to the naked eye in the winter sky from Canada. Although this star is less than 20% of the age of our Sun, somewhat cooler and smaller, and spinning three times faster - its spin pattern slows away from its equator in a carbon copy of the pattern for the Sun's surface. The discovery was made based on four sets of MOST photometry spanning three years, fitted by models of the rotating spots on the surface of kappa 1 Ceti. The analysis was led by MOST Science Team member Gordon Walker and former UBC undergraduate student Bryce Croll (now a PhD student at the University of Toronto). While starspots have been observed before and differential rotation has been inferred in other stars, Gordon Walker explains: "We are the first to have simultaneously tracked several pairs of starspots leading to an unambiguous view of the rotation pattern in another star like the Sun. Kappa 1 Ceti has long been known to have spots and an active magnetic field. Now we have closed the loop by finding the dynamo in action." Jaymie Matthews, MOST Mission Scientist, adds: "We have been able to witness what the Sun may have been like in its childhood." The results have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, the paper can be downloaded from the Science page of our website, and the data will soon available in the Public Archive which can be accessed from the Science page.

January 7th, 2007

Searching for Super-Earths: Near-continuous sequences of photometry by MOST of the transiting exoplanetary system HD 209458 have been searched for evidence of other transiting exoplanets that would have escaped detection by other means. This search, led by Bryce Croll while he was a UBC undergraduate student (now a doctoral student at the University of Toronto), rules out planets in tight orbits (periods of about 0.5 day to 2 weeks) in the same plane as the known exoplanet, down to sizes of only 2 - 4 Earth diameters. These results (which will appear in The Astrophysical Journal and can now be downloaded from the MOST Science page) strongly constrain theories that predict hot Earths would orbit closely to the known hot Jupiter, HD 209458b, as a result of its inward migration to its current small orbit.

September 29th, 2006



Today is a key milestone in the history of Austrian astronomy: the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Austrian national observatory, now located at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Vienna. Although MOST is a Canadian mission, there is an important Austrian connection: Dr. Werner Weiss of the Institute for Astronomy is a member of the MOST Science Team, his students and postdoctoral fellows are very involved in MOST data reduction and analysis, and Vienna hosts one of the three satellite ground stations in the MOST network. The entire MOST Team is happy to celebrate with our Austrian colleagues on this special day.

July 5th, 2006

'MOST Detects g- and p-Modes in the B Supergiant HD 163899'. That's the title of the latest MOST scientific result to be accepted for publication, due to appear in The Astrophysical Journal, by Dr. Hideyuki Saio and the MOST team. This discovery of g-modes (buoyancy waves) in a MOST guide star overturns the original theoretical expectations that such pulsations would be suppressed in such massive evolved stars. Our new models show that that the opposite is true, in agreement with the MOST observations. MOST has discovered yet another previously unknown class of variable star - the slowly pulsating B supergiant (SPBsg) - which shows great promise for understanding the structure and life histories of massive stars. In a related story, UBC doctoral student Chris Cameron presented these results at the recent Canadian Astronomical Society annual meeting in Calgary, and won the prize for the Best Graduate Student Poster Presentation. Congratulations, Chris! The paper and poster are now available on the Science page, and the photometric data on which the results are based are also available in the MOST Public Data Archive, via a link on the Science page.

September 14th, 2006

MOST has detected gravity modes (buoyancy waves) in the Be star beta Canis Minoris. Be stars are hot, massive, rapidly rotating stars surrounded by disks of gas and studies of their pulsations can teach us about their physical structures and stages of evolution. This latest result, led by Dr. Hideyuki Saio, a theorist at Tohoku University in Japan, suggests that such pulsations may occur in all Be stars, but may only be seen if the data are sufficiently sensitive (like the MOST spacebased photometry). The paper announcing these results was just accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available for download on the MOST Science page.

October 23rd, 2006

MOST has discovered two new hybrid pulsators - stars which vibrate simultaneously in two ranges of frequencies associated with the delta Scuti and gamma Doradus classes of variable stars. This doubles the number of such known hybrids and is giving astronomers additional clues about the nature of this phenomenon. The excitement about these stars is that the combination of p- and g-modes offers the potential to derive unique models for their stellar structure. The discoveries are reported in two papers (available on the Science page of this site) just accepted by the journal Communications in Asteroseismology. The principal authors are two UBC students: Jason Rowe, a PhD candidate, and Heather King, an undergraduate astronomy student.

October 31st, 2006

MOST has checked on a pulsating magnetic star whose vibration frequency appeared to be changing over time. UBC doctoral student Chris Cameron, in a paper to appear in the journal Communications in Asteroseismology (see the Science page of this site), has analysed a trial run of MOST photometry and compared the results to models of frequency changes expected due to the evolution of the star that might be seen in only a decade or so. Future MOST observations of this star would be able to test the evolutionary model predictions.

June 30th, 2006

This is the third anniversary of MOST's successful launch into orbit, one day before Canada Day - an early birthday gift to the country. It's a gift that keeps on giving. MOST was originally planned as a one-year mission to monitor about a dozen stars. After three years in space, we have collected data on about 400 stars, unlike any observations that have ever been obtained by astronomers. And the exploration continues.

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March 31st 2006 
The paper "Discovery of the new slowly pulsating B star HD 163830 (B5II/III) from MOST spacebased photometry" has been accepted into the Astrophysical Journal Letters and is now available for download on our science page.

May 4th, 2006  
The paper "Reduction of time-resolved space-based CCD photometry developed for MOST Fabry Imaging data" has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) and is now available for download on our science page.

May 4th, 2006 : 
The paper "An Upper Limit on the Albedo of HD209458b: Direct Imaging Photometry with the MOST Satellite" has been accepted into the Astrophysical Journal and is now available for download on our science page. The data for this target will be available soon on the MOST Public Data Archive.

May 5th, 2006 : 
We have now publically released the 2004 data for HD209458. The data is available for download on the Public Data Archive.

June 1st, 2006 : 
MOST has directly measured differential rotation in the Sun-like star epsilon Eridani, and the research by Bryce Croll and the MOST Team has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. The star epsilon Eri rotates about twice as quickly as the Sun, and the MOST measurements of the motions of its spots at different latitudes agree with theoretical predictions for a younger version of the Sun spinning at about the same rate. The rotating spots also influence readings of the radial velocity of the star and could account for some of the "noise" in measurements of the wobble due to the exoplanet orbiting epsilon Eri. The spot model was produced by a new code, called Starspotz, which is also described in the paper. The paper can be downloaded from the MOST Science Page, and the photometry is now available on the MOST Public Data Archive (linked to the Science page). The link to the program StarSpotz is available here: StarSpotz link

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March 2006  THE SEARCH FOR OTHER EARTHS HAS BEGUN

View larger version of image.

The Canadian Space Agency's MOST space telescope has made the first survey for Earth-sized planets around another Sun-like star. And new results about an exoplanetary system have been unearthed. Or perhaps that should be "un-Earthed".

Unique measurements of the star HD 209458a have been able to eliminate the presence of Earth-sized planets in several of the orbits most expected by theorists. And in the process, these measurements eliminate certain theories to explain the exotic nature of the giant planet already known to orbit that star.

"We have reached a new stage in astronomers' ability to search for planets like Earth outside the Solar System," announced MOST Mission Scientist Dr. Jaymie Matthews of the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. "There are no "hot Earths" in orbits near the "hot Jupiter" around the HD 209458a, but MOST is the only tool that could have told us that."

The MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars) satellite is about the size and mass of a suitcase, but it is capable of measuring tiny changes in the brightness of a star as small as 1/10,000th of a percent, and it can put that star under an astronomical "stakeout", monitoring it 24 hours a day for weeks at a time. No other observatory - on Earth or in space - can duplicate this one-two astronomical punch.

The MOST Science Team used these unique capabilities to search for small planets around a star called HD 209458a. This star is already known to have a giant planet in orbit around it. In fact, that orbit happens to be aligned with the line of sight to Earth so the planet passes in front of the star from our point of view, causing the starlight to dim once per orbit in a process called a "transit". The planet itself is too faint to be seen directly in a picture, and so astronomers have used these transits to determine its size. One puzzle is that this giant planet is too giant; its size is greater than models and observations of other exoplanets would predict.

MOST is capable of seeing even shallower dips in brightness due to smaller planets in the system, and of measuring small changes in the transit times of the known giant planet due to the subtle gravitational tugs of other planets of Earth mass and smaller. Planets in this size and mass range are too small to be detected by the techniques which have been used to discover all the known exoplanets to date.

Eliza Miller-Ricci, a Harvard Ph.D. student who is analysing the MOST transit timing data, explains: "We're using the known giant planet like a clock. If there were no other planets in the system, no moons around it, and its orbit were perfectly circular,then it would pass in front of the star at constant intervals of time. But if there's anything perturbing it, like the gravity of an undetected body in another orbit, then this planetary clock will run slightly fast and slow as we record its orbital ticks."

"One of the most promising theories to explain why the known gas giant planet in the HD 209458 system is larger than expected was that there is an Earth-mass planet in a companion orbit whose tides are affecting it," according to Dr. Dimitar Sasselov, Harvard astronomer and member of the MOST Science Team. "Our results show that can't be the answer."

The same observations from MOST were analysed in a different way by Bryce Croll, an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, working with Dr. Matthews. Mr. Croll describes this parallel strategy: "If all the planets around a star orbit in roughly the same plane, as in our own Solar System, then all of them would cause transits at different periods. The smaller the planet, the shallower the dip in the starlight. The MOST data are unique in that they allow us to look for repeating dips due to planets with orbital periods between about 1 day and 2 weeks, with sizes between about 2 and 5 Earth diameters." By comparison, the known planet in HD 209458 is about 15 times the diameter of the Earth and about 220 times its mass.

MOST is expected to operate for at least several more years, and it will return its gaze to HD 209458 on a regular basis. As the data accumulate, their sensitivity to Earth-like planets in larger orbits will improve. And in the coming years, it will be joined in space by other planet hunters: the French COROT mission, due for launch in October 2006, and NASA's Kepler satellite, which should start the first concerted search for truly Earth-like worlds in 2008.

"For the moment, though, MOST is the only game in town," notes Dr. Matthews. "And its a game we can't lose. If we find an Earth-sized planet, that's the jackpot. But if we rule out Earths in certain places in the Galaxy, we learn more about the rules of how planets form and evolve around other stars, so astronomers can play the planet-hunting game even better in the coming years."

January 20th 2006  delta Ceti: First scientific observations made by MOST

The very first scientific observations ever made by MOST, during the satellite's commissioning in October 2003, will appear in an article in the Astrophysical Journal. During engineering tests, the MOST team trained the space telescope on what they thought was a fairly simple, even boring, star: delta Ceti. This was believed to be one of the few single-periodic beta Cephei pulsators, and its monotonic signal was deemed a good choice to calibrate the early MOST measurements. A detailed analysis of the delta Ceti photometry led by Dr. Conny Aerts,of the Instituut voor Sterrenkunde in Leuven, Belgium, in partnership with the MOST Science Team, has shown that delta Ceti isn't monotonic,and hence, isn't quite as boring as many astronomers believed. The MOST data reveal multiple oscillations frequencies which lead to a seismic model of this massive evolved star, only the third beta Cephei star for which this has been accomplished - despite the fact that the class was discovered about a century ago and there are now a few hundred known variables and candidates.The raw data and reduced light curve for the delta Ceti analysis are now available on the MOST Public Data Archive.

December 17th, 2005  First scientific results from the MOST Startracker field

The first scientific results from the MOST Startracker Field - based on a Guide Star as opposed to a Fabry or Direct Imaging Target - have just been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.The results are quite exciting too - the first detection of g-modes in a Be star. The term "g-modes" refers to gravity-modes (pulsations due to buoyancy rather than pressure in the gas of a star) and a Be star is a hot massive star spinning so rapidly that it is no longer spherical,with gas expelled into a disk surrounding it. The MOST findings represent an important step in understanding the structure and evolution of these stars, whose rapid rotation presents many challenges to theoretical models. The results are described in the paper "MOST Detects g-Modes in the Be Star HD 163868" by G.A.H. Walker, R. Kuschnig, J.M. Matthews, C.Cameron, H. Saio, U. Lee, E. Kambe, S. Masuda, D. B. Guenther, A.F.J. Moffat, S.M. Rucinski, D. Sasselov, and W.W. Weiss. The paper is now available for download on the MOST Science Page, and the light curve and table of identified frequencies have been added to the MOST Public Data Archive.

June 2005 : 
MOST is observed the Wolf-Rayet star WR 103. This represents the first time the MOST Team is tryed a new mode of observing, on a target outside the satellite's Continuous Viewing Zone. This mode could expand the range of possible MOST targets in the sky, at the expense of reduced time coverage.

June 2005 : 
The data for zeta Ophiuchi is now available on the Public Data Archive, accessible from our Science page. Also available is the light curve for zeta Ophiuchi, as well as our published results on this target: "Pulsations of the Oe star zeta Ophiuchi from MOST Satellite Photometry and Ground-Based Spectroscopy".

September 14th, 2005 : 
The data for eta Bootis is now available on the Public Data Archive, accessible from our Science page. Also available is the light curve for eta Bootis, as well as our published results on this target: "Stellar Model Analysis of the Oscillation Spectrum of eta Bootis Obtained from MOST".

September 28th, 2005 : 
The data for PG0101+039 is now available on the Public Data Archive, accessible from our Science page. Coming soon is the light curve for this target, as well as the paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal in November, ""Detection of Long-Period Variations in the Subdwarf B Star PG 0101+039 on the Basis of Photometry from the MOST Satellite.

October 11th, 2005 : 
The paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal in November, ""Detection of Long-Period Variations in the Subdwarf B Star PG 0101+039 on the Basis of Photometry from the MOST Satellite." is now available on our Science page.

October 13th, 2005 : 
The paper "Oscillations in the Massive Wolf-Rayet Star WR123 with the MOST Satellite." has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The raw MOST photometry is now available on the MOST Public Data Archive,accessible from the Science page of this site. The reduced light curve of WR 123 used for that paper is also available.

(CASCA) May 17, 2005 - MOST SPACE TELESCOPE SEES "TAIL WAGGING DOG" IN STAR-EXOPLANET SYSTEM

Canadian astronomers using the MOST space telescope have observed a remarkable planetary system where a giant close-in planet is forcing its parent star to rotate in lock-step with the planet's orbit. "This is truly a stellar story of `tail wags dog'," according to Dr. Jaymie Matthews of the University of British Columbia, leader of the Canadian Space Agency's MOST space telescope mission, in an announcement about the exoplanetary system tau Bootis made at the annual meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society in Montreal today.

"The interactions between the star and the giant planet in the tau Bootis system are unlike anything astronomers have seen before," elaborates Dr. Matthews. "And they would be undetectable by any instrument on Earth or in space other than MOST."

Read the entire CASCA press release
View an animation presented at CASCA

(CASCA) May 17, 2005 -  CANADA'S SPACE TELESCOPE CRACKS OPEN A MASSIVE STAR

The MOST space telescope has given astronomers new clues about an exotic star,at least ten times more massive than our Sun, spewing gas into space at a rate of more than 100 trillion tonnes per second. And according to results presented today at the Canadian Astronomical Society meeting in Montréal, Canada, the star - with the misleadingly bland name of WR123 - is even weirder than astronomers ever suspected.

Image: Hubble image of WR124, a close cousin of WR123.

Read the entire CASCA press release
View a figure showing the observed oscillation of WR123

(CASCA) May 16, 2005 -  MOST SPACE TELESCOPE PLAYS `HIDE & SEEK' WITH AN EXOPLANET; LEARNS ABOUT ATMOSPHERE AND WEATHER OF A DISTANT WORLD

MOST, Canada's first space telescope, has turned up an important clue about the atmosphere and cloud cover of a mysterious planet around another star, by playing a cosmic game of `hide and seek' as that planet moves behind its parent star in its orbit.

The exoplanet, with a name only an astrophysicist could love, HD209458b (orbiting the star HD209458a), cannot be seen directly in images, so the scientists on the MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars) Satellite Team have been using their space telescope to look for the dip in light when the planet disappears behind the star."We can now say that this puzzling planet is less reflective than the gas giant Jupiter in our own Solar System," MOST Mission Scientist Dr. Jaymie Matthews announced today at the annual meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society in Montréal. "This is telling us about the nature of this exoplanet's atmosphere, and even whether it has clouds."

Read the entire CASCA press release

(CASCA) May 16, 2005 -  CANADIAN SPACE TELESCOPE DETECTS PUZZLING BRIGHTNESS VARIATIONS IN DYING STAR

Astronomers are today presenting new results from the Canadian MOST('Microvariability and Oscillations of STars') satellite at the Canadian Astronomical Society Meeting held at the Université de Montréal. Suzanna Randall and Prof. Gilles Fontaine from the Université de Montréal will announce the detection of brightness variations ("pulsations") in the small ageing star PG 0101+039 in collaboration with Prof. Jaymie Matthews,Jason Rowe and Dr. Rainer Kuschnig (University of British Columbia) and the international MOST Science Team. The confirmed variability of this star is of particular interest because it violates predictions of stellar pulsation and will force a thorough reconsideration of current theory.

Read the entire CASCA press release
View the light curve presented at CASCA

(CASCA) May 16, 2005 -  CANADA'S SPACE TELESCOPE DISCOVERS STAR RINGING OUT OF TUNE

Astronomers, using Canada's suitcase-sized space telescope MOST(Microvariability & Oscillations of STars), have discovered that the vibrations of a nearby sun-like star called eta Bootis are out of tune compared to the predictions of theoretical models. Dr. David Guenther of Saint Mary's University, in Halifax,Nova Scotia, presented their new findings on behalf of the MOST Science Team today at the Canadian Astronomical Society meeting in Montréal, QC. The findings have also been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal for publication.

Read the entire CASCA press release
View an animation presented at CASCA

February 25, 2005 - MOST PUBLIC DATA ARCHIVE GOES ONLINE

The first MOST Primary Science data - ultraprecise photometry of the star Procyon - are available for download from a free Public Data Archive.

We'd like to acknowledge the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for funding the archive and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) for providing valuable logistical support.

June 30, 2004 -  MOST CELEBRATES ITS BIRTHDAY WITH A SURPRISING DISCOVERY

On the eve of Canada's birthday, MOST celebrated its first birthday(the anniversary of its launch on 30 June 2003) with a party and the release of new results appearing in the prestigious international science journal Nature on Canada Day. The results are forcing stellar astrophysicists to rethink 20 years of theory and observation of Procyon, one of the best-studied stars in the night sky.

Read the Nature article
Read the UBC press release
View the supplementary materials
   Figure 1   Figure 2   Figure 3   Figure captions
View hi-res versions of the figures from the paper
   Figure 1   Figure 2   Figure 3   Figure 4  
Download the paper and all figures
   Nature_Procyon.zip

June 15, 2004

MOST gives us a unique look at a stellar "pre-teen", kappa 1 Ceti, which is much more active than the Sun and whose "face hasn't cleared up."

Image/animation credit: H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and UBC

Click here to view the animation (4.47 MB)
You may need to download the DivX codec to view the animation.

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Official press release

January 2004

MOST Scientists from across Canada and beyond are meeting at UBC during 25 - 27 January 2004 to discuss and interpret the first scientific results from the MOST Mission, and prepare for their release to the astronomical community and the general public.

The MOST Science Team, headed by Mission Scientist Dr. Jaymie Matthews of UBC, consists of Canadian astrophysicists from UBC, the University of Toronto, Université de Montréal, and St. Mary's University, as well as members from Harvard and the University of Vienna.

Among the outcomes of this meeting should be decisions about which of the initial MOST results will be submitted to scientific journals, and when these will be announced to the public. Although no details on MOST results can be released, one of the Science Team members describes his expectations for the meeting as "very upbeat" given what the Team has seen so far.

January 2004

MOST enters routine Science Operations.

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January 2004

Canadian satellite pointing technology far exceeds the MOST mission requirements.

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October - December 2003

MOST flexes its observational muscles on four Commissioning Target Stars in preparation for routine Science Operations.

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03 November 2003

CSA President Marc Garneau visits the UBC ground station.

Image: (left to right) UBC graduate students Jason Rowe and Chris Cameron; MOST Mission Scientist Jaymie Matthews; CSA President Marc Garneau;MOST Instrument Scientist Rainer Kuschnig; Software Consultant Andrew Walker; UBC undergraduate student Jordon Johnson.

29 September 2003

The IfA Vienna ground station achieves successful two-way communication with the MOST microsatellite,completing the worldwide network of operational ground stations for the MOST Project.

30 July 2003

"First Light" for Canada's First Space Telescope

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CSA Press Release: "First Light" for Canada's First Space Telescope / version française

30 June 2003

MOST is successfully launched into its specified orbit from the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre in Plesetsk, Russia.

Contact with the satellite is established during its first pass over Toronto. Commissioning is underway.

EUROCKOT - Post Launch Press Release
EUROCKOT - 'MOM Daily' Launch Campaign Reports

28 May 2003

MOST arrives safely at Russian launch site.

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CSA Press Release: Canada's MOST Telescope Makes its First Step Toward Space /
      version française
EUROKOT Press Release: At the Service of Science Rockot Multiple Orbit Mission
      hits different Orbit

January 2003

MOST passes critical tests, but launch is delayed to June 2003.

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1 August 2002

The MOST Satellite and Telescope was unveiled to the Canadian Public and Media at UTIAS (Toronto).

CSA Press Release: Canada's First Space Telescope Unveiled / version française

July 2002

Space.com Article: "Cheapest Space Telescope: Making the MOST of $10 million"

December 2001

MOST Science Team selects prime stellar targets for Year 1 of the MOST mission, and backup targets that could be observed in Year 2.

Report in David Dunlap Observatory Newsletter
MOST Target Stars

November 2001

Canadian Space Agency announces signing of launch agreement for MOST with Eurockot. Launch from Russia is scheduled for 17 December 2002.

Eurockot Press
UBC Reports

June 2001

MOST Telescope assembled at Spectral Applied Researchto begin testing.

August 2000

Proposal to adapt MOST to hunt and track asteroids whose orbits cross the Earth's: NESS (Near-Earth Space Surveillance) mission.

Space.com Article: "Canada's Asteroid Protection Plan"

May 2000

First MOST Science Workshop held at UBC. More than 50 scientists from around the world gather in Vancouver to learn about the MOST design and suggest possible scientific applications.

March 2000

MOST Instrument passes Critical Design Review, officially marking the start of Phase D of the project (Manufacturing,
Assembly and Integration).

February 2000

MOST Instrument Critical Design Review held at UBC.

July 1999

MOST passes Preliminary Design Review, officially starting Phase C (Final Design).

June 1999

MOST Preliminary Design Reviews in Toronto and Vancouver.

August 1998

Canadian Space Agency signs contract with Dynacon Enterprises Ltd. (MOST Prime Contractor) to officially kick off Phase A (Preliminary Design)of the MOST Project. UBC is designated the contractor to build the MOST Instrument and oversee the Science Operations, while UTIAS is a principal subcontractor on the MOST microsat bus.

mid 1998

MOST is selected by the CSA from the Phase A competition.

December 1997

MOST Phase A Study complete.

July 1997

MOST Phase A Study begins.

Spring 1997

The Canadian Space Agency selects the project, now named MOST,as one of five proposals to advance to a Phase A Study of feasibility. Dr. Jaymie Matthews (UBC) becomes Mission Scientist and Principal Investigator for the proposal.

December 1996

A team of Canadian astronomers, led by Dr. Slavek Rucinski (then of CRESTech), and including Dr. Jaymie Matthews (UBC) and Dr. Tony Moffat (U. Montréal), submits a proposal to perform optical photometry of stars from a microsat,in partnership with Dynacon Enterprises Ltd. (Toronto). The project is dubbed "STEDY" for "STEllar DYnamics", and to represent the improved degree of steadiness that this microsatellite would require to accomplish its scientific objectives.

July 1996

The Canadian Space Agency initiates the Small Payloads Programme with an announcement of opportunity for proposals to perform science with a microsatellite (mass under 100 kg).