For millennia, the night sky has inspired us to ponder profound questions: How did our Universe begin? Where do we come from? Are we alone? Our curiosity drives us to undertake ambitious projects in search of answers. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is one such big project: made possible by the collaboration of thousands of people from across the globe and across decades, to make their dream a reality. Their stories, and their efforts to complete this remarkable telescope and launch it into space, were captured by the stunning documentary and IMAX experience, “Deep Sky,” created by award-winning and Oscar-nominated director, Nathaniel Kahn.
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NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory celebrated a landmark moment in astronomy and astrophysics with the dedication of the Simonyi Survey Telescope on 4 October 2024. With the Simonyi family as guests of honor, Rubin Observatory recognized the pivotal role of Charles and Lisa Simonyi’s philanthropy in advancing construction of the Observatory and supporting research that will soon transform our understanding of the Universe.
In a surprise finding, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of a huge galaxy seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but apparently in a dangerous neighborhood nearby.
Observations using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) confirm astronomers’ expectation that early-Universe quasars formed in regions of space densely populated with companion galaxies. DECam’s exceptionally wide field of view and special filters played a crucial role in reaching this conclusion, and the observations reveal why previous studies seeking to characterize the density of early-Universe quasar neighborhoods have yielded conflicting results.
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.)
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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