Department of Astronomy

Professor Aaron Evans and co-author Lee Armus discuss what might happen when the Milky Way meets the Andromeda Galaxy in this month's Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/galaxy-collisions-preview-milky-ways-fate/

Image: Forecasted future: An illustration shows a possible view of the merging Milky Way–Andromeda system as seen from Pluto, which may get tossed to the galaxy's outskirts, along with the solar system. Credit: Ron Miller

Nitya Kallivayalil was invited by NSF to sit on a Dark Matter/Dark Energy panel at Awesome-Con (https://awesome-con.com) this past weekend. Other panelists included Joe Pesce (moderator), Zohreh Davoudi, Carter Hall, Marc Kamionkowski and Charles Keeton.

The Owens Family Foundation has selected Nitya Kallivayalil as a recipient of their funding in the amount of $84,000 per year over a three year period. This gift will be used to further her research in near field cosmology and will enable the hiring of a prize postdoctoral fellow to work on resolved stellar populations in the local universe. The Owens Family Foundation has historically funded groundbreaking basic science research that is high risk high reward with a focus on methodological developments.

The Astronomy Department is pleased to announce that Amina Diop has been selected as the first John F. Angle Graduate Fellow in Astronomy. The Angle Fellowships are funded by a gift from Carol Angle and Fritz Angle. They honor Dr. John F. Angle MD (below), who is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in vascular and interventional radiology at UVa. He specializes in minimally invasive techniques to treat peripheral arterial disease, aortic aneurysm disease, venous insufficiency, venous thromboembolic disease, dialysis access maintenance, and cancerous tumors.

An international research group led by a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Virginia’s Department of Astronomy identified a rich organic chemistry in young disks surrounding 50 newly formed stars. Read more here.