Austin (/ˈɒstɨn/ or /ˈɔːstɨn/) is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in the nation from 2000 to 2006. Austin has a population of 790,390 (2010 U.S. Census). The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos metropolitan area, which had an estimated population 1,783,519 (2011 U.S. Census), making it the 34th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States.
In the 1830s, pioneers began to the settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River. After Republic of Texas Vice President Mirabeau B. Lamar visited the area during a buffalo-hunting expedition between 1837 and 1838, he proposed that the republic's capital then located in Houston, Texas, be relocated to the area situated on the north bank of the Colorado River near the present-day Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge. In 1839, the site was officially chosen as the republic's new capital (the republic's seventh and final location) and was incorporated under the name, Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas" and the republic's first secretary of state.
The W. M. Keck Observatory is a two-telescope astronomical observatory at an elevation of 4,145 metres (13,600 ft) near the summit of Mauna Kea in the U.S. state of Hawaii. The primary mirrors of each of the two telescopes are 10 metres (33 ft) in diameter, making them the second largest optical telescopes in the world, slightly behind the Gran Telescopio Canarias, however the Gran Canary telescope does not have the capability to use all of its 10.4 meters, thus making the Keck telescopes the largest observable telescope in the world. The telescopes can operate together to form a single astronomical interferometer.
In 1985, Howard B. Keck of the W. M. Keck Foundation gave $70 million to fund the design and construction of the Keck I Telescope. The key advance that allowed the construction of the Keck's large telescopes was the ability to operate smaller mirror segments as a single, contiguous mirror. In the case of the Keck each of the primary mirrors is composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work together as a single unit. The mirrors were made from Zerodur glass-ceramic by the German company Schott AG. On the telescope, each segment is kept stable by a system of active optics, which uses extremely rigid support structures in combination with adjustable warping harnesses. During observation, a computer-controlled system of sensors and actuators adjusts the position of each segment, relative to its neighbors, to an accuracy of four nanometers. This twice-per-second adjustment counters the effect of gravity as the telescope moves, in addition to other environmental effects that can affect the mirror shape.
Johnston may refer to Johnston (surname). It may also refer to:
Catherine Austin Fitts is the president of Solari, Inc., the publisher of The Solari Report, managing member of Solari Investment Advisory Services, LLC., and managing member of Sea Lane Advisory Services, LLC.
Fitts served as managing director and member of the board of directors of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. Inc., as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Bush Administration, and was the president of Hamilton Securities Group, Inc., an investment bank and financial software developer.
Fitts has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from the Wharton School and studied Mandarin at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She publishes a column, "Mapping the Real Deal," in Scoop in New Zealand.
Alan Graham Johnston (born 17 May 1962) is a British journalist working for the BBC. He has been the BBC's correspondent in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip, and is currently the correspondent in Rome. Johnston was kidnapped by a group of Palestinian militants on 12 March 2007, and released nearly four months later on 4 July, after Hamas' seizure of control in Gaza.
Johnston was born in Lindi, Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania), to Scottish parents.
Johnston was educated at the Dollar Academy, an independent school which is said to be the oldest co-educational day and boarding school in the world, in the small town of Dollar in Clackmannanshire in central Scotland, followed by the University of Dundee, where he graduated with an MA in English and politics. He also completed a diploma in Journalism Studies from Cardiff University.
Johnston joined the BBC in 1991, and has spent eight years as a correspondent for them, including in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as well as Kabul, Afghanistan. He was in Kabul when Afghanistan was still under the control of the Taliban. He was due to be the BBC's full-time correspondent in Gaza until 1 April 2007, and at the time of his kidnapping was the only foreign reporter with a major Western media organisation to still be based in the city.