News: 2024

August

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.


July

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). 


Congratulations to Dr. Elyssa Brooks

July 30, 2024

Congratulations to Elyssa Brooks for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on "Developments of Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors".


Graduate student Ava Polzin awarded 2024 Quad Fellowship

July 25, 2024

Congratulations to Astronomy & Astrophysics graduate student Ava Polzin, who has been awarded a 2024 Quad Fellowship.


Samantha Usman has been awarded the AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship

July 12, 2024

Congratulations to graduate student Samantha Usman!  She is the recipient of an AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship. 


June

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


Congratulations to the Class of 2024!

June 4, 2024

Rohan GuptA, Jamar Sullivan, Jonah Medoff, Ariel Barnea, Raul Teixeira, Kabelo Tsiane, Marie Tagliavia, Audrey Scott, Riley Rosener, Nikita Munsif, Megan Zhao, Kyla Mullaney, Helen Tan


 


May

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


John Carlstrom has been awarded the Arthur L. Kelly Faculty Prize for Exceptional Service in the PSD

May 22, 2024

John Carlstrom, Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College, receives this prize in recognition of his critical contributions to the Physical Sciences Division and the continued success of both academic departments.


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”


April

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".