Department of Astronomy

A team of astronomers, including Jonathan Tan of Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden and the University of Virginia, are using NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy to study the births of massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. “Understanding the birth process of massive stars is one of the most important unsolved problems of modern astrophysics, since these stars are so influential throughout our galaxy and beyond.” says Tan.

Dr. John Wilson, a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Astronomy, is the recipient of the 2017 Maria and Eric Muhlmann award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. This award recognizes recent significant observational results made possible by innovative advances in astronomical instrumentation, software, or observational infrastructure and is one of the few in the astronomical world focused on instrumentation.

On July 17, a primitive solar system object that’s more than 6.5 billion kilometers away passed in front of a distant star as seen from Earth. Twenty-four telescopes and dozens of astronomers, including UVA faculty, staff, and students, were deployed by the New Horizons team to a remote part of Argentina in an effort to catch the shadow of the object - an event that's known as an occulation. Several telescopes, including one operated by UVA astronomer Anne Verbiscer, were in precisely the right place at the right time to catch its fleeting shadow.

The Deparartment of Astronomy is pleased to announce the following awards presented at Final Exercises on May 20, 2017: