Department of Astronomy

UVA astronomer Anne Verbiscer helped find a new target in the Kuiper Belt, the icy body 2014 MU69, for the NASA New Horizons spacecraft. New Horizons will pay a visit to 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019.

Read the full article at UVA Today.

The discovery of subgaint stars opened the field of observational stellar evolution. Alan Sandage (Carnegie Institution) teamed up with Steven Majewski (University of Virginia), and Majewski’s student, Rachael Beaton (now a postdoc at Carnegie Institution) to delve into the history of the discovery of subgiant stars. They showed that the observations of the subgiants discovered at the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1935 were remarkably accurate.

In a new paper published last month in The Astronomical Journal, a team of astronomers led by Department of Astronomy graduate student Nicholas Troup has shown that the brown dwarf desert is not as barren as previously thought. UVA faculty members Steven Majewski, Michael Skrutskie and John Wilson in the Department of Astronomy collaborated on the findings as part of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment, itself part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Astronomers had long expected that t

UVA Today has an outstanding feature article on the New Horzions mission to Pluto featuring UVA scientists Anne Verbiscer (Astronomy) and Alan Howard (Environmental Sciences).

Read the Article at UVA Today

Anne Verbiscer (Astronomy) and Alan Howard (Environmental Sciences) are co-authors on several papers in the 18 March 2016 issue of Science which highlight results from the New Horizons Pluto Flyby.  The cover image reveals detail on Pluto's surface, as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. At left is the bright, white Sputnik Planum, an informally named plain of nitrogen ice.  On the right are the dark red highlands of Krun Macula which rise 2.5 kilometers above the plains.