Near-Field Cosmology at Virginia
Near-Field Cosmology at Virginia
Near-Field Cosmology at Virginia
A group of astronomers, including U.Va.'s Craig Sarazin, have observed two groups of galaxies slamming into one another at a speed of about 4 million miles per hour. The colliding groups will eventually merge and form a single cluster of galaxies; these are the largest objects in the Universe. Clusters contain as much material as one million, billion stars. This cosmic train wreck was observed with a number of space and ground-based observatories, including by U.Va. astronomers using the Apache Point Observatory (APO) in New Mexico. U.Va.
South Africa's MeerKAT peers deep into the Universe - UVA Grad Student Allison Matthews continues to work on this project to learn more about star formation. Learn more about her work here: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/South_Africas_MeerKAT_peers_deep_into_...
Astronomy Professor Kelsey Johnson recently gave a TED Talk on Light Pollution and 5 ridiculously easy was to fix it! You can watch her talk at Kelsey Johnson TED Talk.
Astronomy Professor Ilse Cleeves was awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering to support her research on astrochemistry and the formation of planets. The award was announced by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation on Tuesday, October 15. These Fellowships are among the most prestigious and selective in American science. Previous Fellows include scientists who went on to be awarded Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics, the Fields Medal in Mathematics, the Alan T.
UVa Astronomy graduate student Thankful Cromartie led a paper published in Nature Astronomy detailing the discovery of the most massive neutron star ever observed. This work was conducted along with her advisor Scott Ransom (of UVa and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory) and the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration. The team used pulsar timing — accounting for every rotation of dense, rapidly rotating stellar remnants — to measure the mass of J0740+6620, a 2.89-ms pulsar with a binary white dwarf companion.
A group of astronomers, including Craig Sarazin from U.Va., have made the first high-resolution, high-frequency radio map of the Moon. The image, at a radio frequency of 90 GHz, was made with the MUSTANG2 camera on the Green Bank Telescope, the world’s largest steerable telescope. At this radio frequency, the image shows heat radiation form the lunar surface, and brighter regions are hotter. The image shows many of the same features as seen in more familiar optical images. However, because temperature variations across the lunar surface are smaller than the variations
While our solar system contains dozens of moons orbiting the planets, there is as yet no clear detection of a moon orbiting an extrasolar planet. A group of astronomers and planetary scientists, led by former UVa graduate student Apurva Oza, have a new paper accepted to the Astrophysical Journal (http://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10732) which shows that these exo-moons may have been hiding in plain sight.
Nitya Kallivayalil, an associate professor in Astronomy, has been award a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). This is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers who are beginning their independent research careers and show exceptional promise for leadership in science and technology. Nitya was nominated by the National Science Foundation. The award was announced in a press release from the White House. The press release can be found here:
Steve Layman, an amateur astronomer who’s made a career in music, works with the astronomy department to bring telescopes to schools and Scouts. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)
Ilse Cleeves and Steve Majewski have received a 2022 Research Achievement Award from UVA. Read more here:... Read»
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»
“Pluto’s huge nitrogen-ice-filled basin, Sputnik Planitia, is a dominant feature on the dwarf planet,” said Dr. Anne Verbiscer, who is a research professor in the Department of Astronomy at the... Read»