Astronomers have directed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this region the Extreme Outer Galaxy due to its location more than 58,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center. (For comparison, Earth is approximately 26,000 light-years from the center.)
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Maui, Hawaii – The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the world’s most powerful solar telescope, designed, built, and operated by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSO), achieved a major breakthrough in solar physics by directly mapping the strength of the magnetic field in the solar corona, the outer part of the solar atmosphere that can be seen during a total eclipse. This breakthrough promises to enhance our understanding of space weather and its impact on Earth’s technology-dependent society.
The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging together, and shifting appearance. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes can only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime. However, galaxies leave behind clues to their history and how they came to be. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have the capacity to look for these fossils of galaxy formation with high-resolution imaging of galaxies in the nearby universe.
When astronomers got their first glimpses of galaxies in the early universe from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, they were expecting to find galactic pipsqueaks, but instead they found what appeared to be a bevy of Olympic bodybuilders. Some galaxies appeared to have grown so massive, so quickly, that simulations couldn’t account for them. Some researchers suggested this meant that something might be wrong with the theory that explains what the universe is made of and how it has evolved since the big bang, known as the standard model of cosmology.
Universidad de Chile Dr. Mónica Rubio obtained her Ph.D. degree in Astrophysics and Spatial Techniques at the Universitè de Paris, France. She is full professor at the Astronomy Department of the Universidad de Chile and an expert astrophysicist in millimeter-radioastronomy. She is Vice President of the International Astronomical Union (2024-2030). She was President of Division […]
Michigan State University Donahue grew up on a farm near Inland, Nebraska, a town of about sixty people. Her undergraduate physics S.B. degree is from MIT (1985) and her astrophysics Ph.D. is from the University of Colorado, Boulder (1990). Her post-doctoral research in observational astronomy was completed at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of […]
Infiniscape Incorporated Betsy Barton began her career as an academic astrophysicist, studying the evolution of galaxies, as a Hubble Fellow in Arizona and then as an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at U.C. Irvine. She served on the Gemini Board and was instrumental in the early development of large, ground-based telescopes. […]
STIC Chair Morgan State University Dr. Rockward has a unique combination of leadership from academic, professional, and community experiences. Currently, he is a Full Professor and the Chair of the Department of Physics & Engineering Physics at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Among his professional leadership experiences, he is Past President of both the National […]
AURA President (ex officio) Matt Mountain, President of AURA since 2015, is the Telescope Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and a member of the JWST Science Working Group. Previously, he was Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and prior to that led the construction of and directed Gemini Observatory. He received […]
AMCR Chair Fermilab Dr. Brenna Flaugher is a Distinguished Scientist Emeritus at Fermilab, retired in May 2024. She started her career in particle physics on the Collider Detector at Fermilab Experiment. From 2003-2012 she was the project manager and scientific lead of the Dark Energy Survey Camera construction project and was awarded an American Physical […]
AURA Board Vice-Chair Rutgers University Andrew Baker is a distinguished professor at Rutgers University and an extraordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape. His research focuses on the use of radio, millimeter, and submillimeter observations of interstellar matter to probe galaxy evolution in the nearby and distant universe. Baker was the AURA Member […]
New Mexico State University James McAteer PhD is Deputy Provost and Professor of Astronomy at New Mexico State University. His service is in academic oversight, student success, and faculty excellence, building relationships among faculty, staff, students, and leadership. As Chair of Astronomy McAteer performed financial management over Apache Point Observatory, and as Director of Sunspot […]
LIGO Laboratory California Institute of Technology David Reitze is the Executive Director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) Laboratory at Caltech and Research Professor at the California Institute of Technology. Prior to that, he spent almost 20 years on the faculty of the University of Florida in the Physics Department. His research focuses on […]
NMOC Chair Hunter College, City University of New York Professor Kelle Cruz is an astronomer who earned her B.A. and Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech and the American Museum of Natural History. Currently, she is an Associate Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, and […]
University of Michigan Sally Oey is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Astronomy at the University of Michigan. She specializes in the study of massive stars and their feedback effects on host galaxy ecosystems. Oey is a graduate of the University of Arizona (Ph.D. 1995) and held prize postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, […]
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