Department of Astronomy, U.Va.

Star Formation At Virginia

UVA Astronomers Study Huge Lava Lake on Jupiter's moon Io

UVA astronomer Michael Skrutskie and colleagues have taken advantage of a chance alignment of Jupiter's moons to study Io's Loki Patera volcano and its huge lava lake with 40 times better resolution than any past Earth-based observations.

Astronomers Find Six New Millisecond Pulsars

UVA graduate student Thankful Cromartie used the Arecibo Observatory to observe unidentified gamma-ray sources in the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope source catalog and discovered six new millisecond pulsars! Five of the six pulsars are in interacting compact binaries (with periods < 8.1 hr), while the sixth is a more typical neutron star-white dwarf binary with an 83-day orbital period.

Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) at Virginia

Instrumentation Laboratory at Virginia

Theoretical and Computational Astrophysics At Virginia

Theoretical and Computational Astrophysics at Virginia

Astrochemistry at Virginia

World Class Facilities at Virginia

Planetary Science at Virginia

Planetary Science at Virginia

UVA Astronomers Contribute to Landmark Observations of Jupiter's Moon Io

University of Virginia astronomer Dr. Mike Skrutskie and former UVA Ph.D. student Dr. Jarron Leisenring used the Large Binocular Telescope to make landmark observations of a giant lava lake on Jupiter's moon Io. Details on the observations and what they found are in this UVAToday article.

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News & Announcements

PBS NOVA Special - first results from JWST

March 2, 2023

The James Webb Space Telescope has provided scientists with previously unimaginable details of galaxies millions of light years away. Now astronomers including the University of Virginia’... Read»

Two astronomy faculty win Research Achievement Awards

February 3, 2023

Ilse Cleeves and Steve Majewski have received a 2022 Research Achievement Award from UVA. Read more here:... Read»

Artemis I Tees Up Manned Mission to the Moon

January 27, 2023

UVA Today sat down with Matt Pryal, a University of Virginia assistant professor of astronomy, to discuss the success of Artemis I. Read more here: ... Read»

Events

Tomorrow

Patrick Kamieneski: Dissecting Extreme Starburst Events at Cosmic Noon with Gravitational Lensing
- Start time: 3:30pm
- End time: 4:30pm
- Abstract: The brightest objects in the submillimeter sky include a population of dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs), which host extreme infrared luminosities (10^12-13.5 Lsun) reflecting enormous star formation rates of 100 - 3000 Msun/yr. While they have been carefully scrutinized in the decades since their initial discovery, fundamental questions remain about this extreme, short-lived starburst phase—in particular, how they are fueled and subsequently extinguished. Yet, given their cosmological distances and complete lack of suitable low-redshift analogs, we can rarely observe the gas, dust, and stellar mass at the sub-kiloparsec spatial scales that are critical for understanding their prodigious star formation. Fortunately, the Universe provides us with a solution in the form of strong gravitational lensing. By amplifying the flux and magnifying the spatial distribution of distant objects, lensing offers a view of high-redshift galaxies that is usually only afforded by the local Universe. With an all-sky selection via Planck and WISE, we have defined the PASSAGES (Planck All-Sky Survey to Analyze Gravitationally-lensed Extreme Starburst) pilot sample of 30 lensed DSFGs (z = 1 - 3.5), which includes a significant fraction of the rarest, most luminous IR objects ever discovered (>10^13 Lsun). After deriving parametric lens models to reconstruct them in the source-plane (with boosted resolution), we have analyzed the distribution of stellar light captured by Hubble, star formation at radio continuum imaged by the VLA, and dust and molecular gas revealed by ALMA. We find that ongoing star formation in these extreme objects is widely distributed over kpc scales, running contrary to the expectation that they are significantly self-regulated by stellar feedback and radiation pressure from massive stars. With the combined information from gas kinematics—which show signatures more in line with ordered, rotationally-supported disks than with turbulent major mergers—this highlights the role of the efficiency of gas accretion in driving DSFGs. Finally, I will present new results from JWST that highlight the telescope’s synergy with ALMA in uncovering the build-up of stellar mass at Cosmic Noon.

Friday, April 7th

McCormick Observatory Public Night
- Start time: 9:00pm
- End time: 11:00pm
- Registration required.Visitors can view celestial objects through the historic 26-inch McCormick Refractor and other smaller telescopes (weather permitting), tour the Observatory, hear a presentation by an astronomer, and see the exhibits. All faculty, postdocs and graduate students participate through a rotating schedule.In order to limit overcrowding, registration is required on our Eventbrite website. Tickets remain FREE. You will be asked to provide your name, contact details, the number of visitors in your party, and the number of vehicles you will be parking. We are currently limiting the number of visitors to a total of 60 people and 30 cars per night, broken into two windows: 30 people and 15 cars from 9pm-10pm, and 30 people and 15 cars from 10pm-11pm. Registration is first come, first served. Once a public night is at capacity, you have the option to select other dates. If you have questions about the Eventbrite, please call our office during normal business hours. Access our Eventbrite here.

Wednesday, April 12th

Yuri Kovalev
- Start time: 12:05pm
- End time: 1:00pm
- TUNA Host: Rebecca Charbonneau

Tuesday, April 18th

Agniva Roychowdhury (UMBC)
- Where: ER 230 + zoom
- Start time: 12:05pm
- End time: 1:00pm
- Title:
  CAgNVAS I. A new generation DIFMAP for Modelfitting Interferometric Data
  
  Abstract:
  We present the program `Catalogue of proper motions in extragalactic jets from Active galactic Nuclei with Very large Array Studies' or CAgNVAS, with the objective of using archival and new VLA observations to measure proper motions of jet components beyond hundred parsecs. This objective requires extremely high accuracy in component localization. Interferometric datasets are noisy and often lack optimal coverage of the complex plane, making interpretation of subtleties in deconvolved imaging inaccurate. Fitting models to complex visibilities, rather than working in the imaging plane, is generally preferred as a solution when one needs the most accurate description of the true source structure. In this paper, we present a new generation version of $\texttt{DIFMAP}$ (\texttt{ngDIFMAP}) to model and fit interferometric closure quantities developed for the CAgNVAS program. \texttt{ngDIFMAP} uses a global optimization algorithm based on simulated annealing, which results in more accurate parameter estimation especially when the number of parameters is high. Using this package we demonstrate the ramifications of amplitude and phase errors, as well as loss of $u-v$ coverage, on parameters estimated from visibility data. The package can be used to accurately predict variance, bias, and correlations between parameters. Our results demonstrate the limits on information recovery from noisy interferometric data, with a particular focus on the accurate reporting of errors on measured quantities.

Friday, April 21st

Education and Public Outreach Meeting
- Start time: 12:00pm
- End time: 1:00pm
McCormick Observatory Public Night
- Start time: 9:00pm
- End time: 11:00pm
- Registration required.Visitors can view celestial objects through the historic 26-inch McCormick Refractor and other smaller telescopes (weather permitting), tour the Observatory, hear a presentation by an astronomer, and see the exhibits. All faculty, postdocs and graduate students participate through a rotating schedule.In order to limit overcrowding, registration is required on our Eventbrite website. Tickets remain FREE. You will be asked to provide your name, contact details, the number of visitors in your party, and the number of vehicles you will be parking. We are currently limiting the number of visitors to a total of 60 people and 30 cars per night, broken into two windows: 30 people and 15 cars from 9pm-10pm, and 30 people and 15 cars from 10pm-11pm. Registration is first come, first served. Once a public night is at capacity, you have the option to select other dates. If you have questions about the Eventbrite, please call our office during normal business hours. Access our Eventbrite here.

Friday, May 5th

McCormick Observatory Public Night
- Start time: 9:00pm
- End time: 11:00pm
- Registration required.Visitors can view celestial objects through the historic 26-inch McCormick Refractor and other smaller telescopes (weather permitting), tour the Observatory, hear a presentation by an astronomer, and see the exhibits. All faculty, postdocs and graduate students participate through a rotating schedule.In order to limit overcrowding, registration is required on our Eventbrite website. Tickets remain FREE. You will be asked to provide your name, contact details, the number of visitors in your party, and the number of vehicles you will be parking. We are currently limiting the number of visitors to a total of 60 people and 30 cars per night, broken into two windows: 30 people and 15 cars from 9pm-10pm, and 30 people and 15 cars from 10pm-11pm. Registration is first come, first served. Once a public night is at capacity, you have the option to select other dates. If you have questions about the Eventbrite, please call our office during normal business hours. Access our Eventbrite here.

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News & Announcements

March 2, 2023

February 3, 2023

January 27, 2023

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