News: Research

2024

‘Weird’ Ancient Galaxy Discovered by James Webb Space Telescope

September 26, 2024

A "totally new phenomenon" has been discovered by astronomers in a strange galaxy from the dawn of time.


NSF and Simons Foundation launch $20 million National AI Research Institute in Astronomy

September 18, 2024

SkAI Institute will develop AI tools and accelerate astronomy’s data-driven revolution


At Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, UChicago student unravels the mysteries of galaxies

September 10, 2024

During summer internship in Germany, rising fourth-year Zewei Wu simulates astrophysical plasma


UChicago astrophysicist Rafael Luque receives ‘Starting Grant’ from the European Research Council

September 5, 2024

UChicago postdoctoral researcher Rafael Luque has obtained a Starting Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) for the THIRSTEE project. The project's objective is to study and understand the origin and properties of sub-Neptune-type planets, the most common around solar-type stars (similar to our sun) in the Milky Way. The grant of 1.5 million euros over the next five years is part of the European Union's Horizon Europe program.


Giant Magellan Telescope Mount Fabrication Begins

August 30, 2024

The Giant Magellan Telescope and Ingersoll Machine Tools Inc. today announced the start of manufacturing and assembly of the largest telescope mount built in the United States.


New Webb Telescope data suggests our model of the universe may hold up after all

August 22, 2024

UChicago-led analysis measures universe expansion rate, finds there may not be a ‘Hubble tension’


NASA’s Webb telescope peers into the boundary between day and night on a distant world

August 20, 2024

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have glimpsed tantalizing new details about what it’s like at the boundary of a tidally locked planet—that is, one where half of the planet is always exposed to its star, while the other is always shrouded in darkness.


Dan Hooper named director of WIPAC

July 31, 2024

Astronomy & Astrophysics and KICP Professor and FNAL Senior Scientist Dan Hooper has been selected as the new director of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC). 


Revived technology used to count individual photons from distant galaxies

June 27, 2024

Enabled by a U.S. Department of Energy program, a collaboration of scientists from Fermilab, UChicago, NOIRLab, and other institutions demonstrated that skipper-CCD detectors can be utilized to improve cosmology research.


Simons Observatory Begins Hunt for Echoes of the Big Bang in Universe’s Oldest Light

June 5, 2024

The observatory’s four telescopes will make the most precise measurements ever taken of the cosmic microwave background and reveal information about what happened just after the universe’s birth


Abigail Lee and Hanjue Zhu won the 2024 Price Prize in Cosmology and Astrophysics

May 30, 2024

CCAPP is proud to announce Abigail Lee (U. Chicago) and Hanjue Zhu (U. Chicago) as the winners of the 2024 Price Prize in Cosmology and Astrophysics


Wendy Freedman has been awarded the Georges Lemaître International Prize

May 30, 2024

Prof. Freedman is a Canadian-American cosmologist at the University of Chicago who works in the area of refining measurement of the Hubble Constant. She is renowned for her work on Cepheid variable stars through a Hubble Space Telescope Key Project. Her work and accomplishments are closely connected to the big-bang theory of Georges Lemaître.


Atop a Chilean mountain, undergraduate students make cutting-edge astronomical observations, UChicago News

May 28, 2024

UChicago students conduct research at Magellan Observatory as part of new field course


Ava Polzin won the audience prize in UChicagoGRAD’s Thesis competition

May 21, 2024

Ava Polzin, Astronomy and Astrophysics “The Smallest Pieces of the Puzzle: Using Dwarf Galaxies to Understand the Universe”


Congratulations to Dr. Zhuowen (Ben) Zhang

April 26, 2024

Congratulations to Zhuowen (Ben) Zhang for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on "Forward modeling of cluster systematics for cluster cosmology".