• 2024-03-12 - We want to congratulate the successful thesis defense of the newly minted Dr. Patrick Aleo. He has successfully defended his thesis with his advisor, Professor Gautham Narayan. 
     Posted: 2024-03-12
  • 2024-02-20 - Led by Prof. Decker French, the IDEAS program (Illinois Developing Equity in Astrophysics Summer School) has once again received financial support from the Illinois Space Grant Consortium!  IDEAS is an 8-week summer program, running from June 3 to July 26, that matches undergraduate students from historically underrepresented groups with faculty at the University of Illinois doing research...
     Posted: 2024-02-20
  • 2023-11-15 - Prof. Leslie Looney is part of the team that created this beautiful image of the circumstellar disk of HL Tauri in dust polarization using ALMA at a resolution of ~5 au-- coming out soon in Nature. They find more dust polarization in the gaps than the rings, suggesting that a dust alignment mechanism in the gaps is aerodynamically aligning the effectively prolate (kind of like an American...
     Posted: 2023-11-15
  • 2023-11-14 - Prof. Charles Gammie has been named an Ikenberry Endowed Chair, one of the most prestigious named appointments at the Urbana-Champaign campus.  Prof. Gammie, who previously held the Donald Biggar Willett Chair in Physics, is a Professor in both Physics and Astronomy, and is known for his theoretical modeling of accretion disks and black holes, including the supermassive black holes being...
     Posted: 2023-11-14
  • 2023-10-06 - Third-year grad student, Grant Merz, has been awarded an LSST LINCC incubator as PI. LSST, which stands for Legacy Survey of Space and Time, awarded only four PIs worldwide. Congratulations, Grant!
     Posted: 2023-10-06
  • 2023-10-03 - In a new study published in the journal Nature, Astronomy-affiliated faculty Siegfried Eggl and colleagues highlight the impact that satellites for mobile internet are having on ground-based astronomy.  See this news release from Illinois Aerospace Engineering.
     Posted: 2023-10-03
  • Graduate student Frankie Encalada and Professor Leslie Looney are part of the international team that imaged the circumstellar disks around 19 very young protostars, revealing the beginning of planet formation, and disks that are different and less settled than the older disk systems....
     Posted: 2023-07-06
  • Triple congratulations to Prof. Yue Shen. Not only has he been approved by campus to be promoted to Full Professor, but he has won the 2023 Campus Distinguished Promotion Award and he has been appointed a 2023 LAS Dean's Distinguished Professor Scholar.
     Posted: 2023-06-09
  • Undergrad Lilly Kettler, grad student Kedar Phadke, and Prof. Joaquin Vieira are part of a team that detected organic molecules in the furthest galaxy to date. Read about it here.
     Posted: 2023-06-06
  • Congratulations to the Astronomy Class of 2023!   May 2023: Anya Abraham, Rithika Baskar, Simon Boyle, Qifeng Cheng, Philip Coady. Itay Gozalzani, Zhongxing Hu, Kitetsu Kaku, Ilia Kiato, Aaron Koller, Tanushree Kumar, Caleb Lair, Jay Mahajan, Lily Mrazek, Alexander Newman, Yunsuk Oh, Michael Ostoja- Starzewski, Bhavya Pardasani , Manali Patel , Raj Patel , Shavan Patel , Aassik Pazhani...
     Posted: 2023-06-01
  • Congratulations to Prof. Xin Liu for being named a Norman P. Jones Professorial Scholar! This is a college award based upon her outstanding contribution to the college’s educational mission including research, teaching, service, and diversity and inclusion.
     Posted: 2023-05-30
  • Congratulations to Prof. Gautham Narayan for being awarded the Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors (LEAP) Award! This is a college award based upon his outstanding contribution to the college’s educational mission including research, teaching, citizenship, and diversity and inclusion.
     Posted: 2023-05-30
  • The annual Girl's Astronomy Summer Camp returns this year. High school students entering 10th to 12th grades are encouraged to attend. The dates are June 26 and 27. More information, including the link to the application can be found here.
     Posted: 2023-05-25
  • Grad student Melanie Archipley spent several months at the South Pole telescope. Read the article here
     Posted: 2023-05-24
  • Congratulations to Illinois undergrads Ian Brunton and Connor O’Mahoney, Prof. Brian Fields, and collaborators! They have a new paper out that show that x-ray luminous supernovae could have lethal consequences up to 160 light years away. Read the article here.
     Posted: 2023-04-20