News: 2020

March

Richard Miller, pioneer of computational astrophysics, 1926–2020

March 25, 2020


Meet Astronomy & Astrophysics student Amy Tang

March 10, 2020


“Scientists seize rare chance to watch faraway star system evolve”, by Sherry Landow, Phys.org

March 4, 2020

"Finding young planets is challenging. We really need to understand the behavior of the parent star to be able to find the shallow signals of these planets which can be overwhelmed by starspots and flares," says Adina Feinstein, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study.


“Leftover Big Bang light helps calculate how massive faraway galaxies are”, UChicago News

March 3, 2020

Fermilab, UChicago scientists tap South Pole Telescope data to shed light on universe

A team of scientists have demonstrated how to "weigh" galaxy clusters using light from the earliest moments of the universe - a new method that could help shed light on dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the cosmos, such as how the universe formed.


February

“New Solar Telescope Reveals Sun’s Surface in More Detail than Ever Before”, WTTW News

February 13, 2020

A new solar telescope in Hawaii has captured images of the sun unlike any seen before.  Professor Robert Rosner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and one of the lead investigators on the project, says he’s been waiting for almost 40 years to see images like the ones recently captured.


January

“Prof. Eugene Parker wins prestigious Crafoord Prize in Astronomy”, UChicago News

January 30, 2020

Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences honors UChicago scientist’s pioneering work.
 


“2020 LAD Laboratory Astrophysics Prize Goes to James Truran”, AAS News

January 22, 2020

The Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is awarding its 2020 Laboratory Astrophysics Prize to Dr. James Truran of the University of Chicago. This prize is given for his theoretical work on early star formation and the nucleosynthesis history of the universe, as well as for his seminal contributions to the study of astrophysical thermonuclear explosions, nucleosynthesis, and the use of nuclear-decay chronometers to determine ages of stellar and terrestrial matter.


“What will the next decade bring in science?”, UChicago News

January 9, 2020

"The most exciting thing is always something you haven't anticipated. In astronomy, whenever we've invented a new way to look at the sky, we discover something new that no one had ever thought of before. Our gravitational wave detectors haven't discovered anything profoundly unexpected, at least not yet."
- Daniel Holz, astrophysicist

 


NASA’s TESS spacecraft discovers its first habitable planet, first world with two stars

January 9, 2020

NASA’s TESS spacecraft discovers its first habitable planet, first world with two stars