Department of Astronomy

The universe has a hidden structure, and a University of Virginia professor is mapping it in 3D, using 46 million galaxies and quasars and 19 million stars. Satya Gontcho A Gontcho is part of a team using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to conduct one of the most extensive surveys of the cosmos ever.

Why did the radio telescope go up the mountain? To look out into space, of course. A German-made DSA-2000 radio telescope, weighing in at 5,000 pounds with a dish 5 meters in diameter, journeyed to the University of Virginia’s Grounds on March 31 following three weeks at sea.

Astronomers at the University of Virginia have identified one of the most iron-poor stars ever observed outside the Milky Way, a discovery that offers rare insight into how the very first stars lived and died.

The University of Virginia’s Department of Astronomy has long punched above its weight. Once a cornerstone of Thomas Jefferson’s vision for a model public-university education, the department today — backed by major new investments from the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and energized by ambitious, cross-disciplinary initiatives — is entering what Chair and Vanderbilt Professor of Astronomy Steven Majewski calls a defining era.

Astronomers have captured the first radio waves ever detected from a rare class of exploding star, a discovery that has given them an unprecedented look into the final years of a massive star before its death in a powerful stellar explosion called a supernova.