Congratulations to Dr. Paul Sutter, who was just awarded the 2022 Corones Award. Paul is one of our physics alums (worked with Prof. Ricker) and a great science communicator. Read about it here.

A team of Astronomers including Prof. French have discovered that post-starburst galaxies condense their gas rather than expelling it, begging the question: what’s actually keeping them from forming stars? Read more here: https://public.nrao.edu/news/post-starburst-galaxies-gas/ The results of this study are published in the...

Illinois Prof. Looney was part of the team (led by alum John Tobin) that probed the youngest protostars in Orion at the highest resolution to date. They found that roughly 30% of all systems surveyed contained multiple stars, which shows that binary formation occurs hand in hand with the earliest stages of star formation. Binary separation peaks at two values, 100 au and 3000 au, which suggests...

New affiliate Astronomy faculty Prof. Eggl and Astronomy Research Prof. Gruendl were invited to join the new International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference. Read more here

Prof. Leslie Looney discusses near Earth asteroids in Newsweek

Congratulations to Prof. Brian Fields for being on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent By Their Students in Fall 2021 for ASTR - Stellar Astrophysics!                            ...

                      Congratulations to Astronomy major Signe Mason! She was awarded a $1,000 Astronomy merit scholarship due to a generous Astronomy donor.        ...

Professor Leslie Looney, among others, warns about the long term concern of killer asteroids and comets. Read more here.

Congratulations to graduate student Alex Gagliano for winning the inaugural Lew Snyder Graduate Student Travel Award. Alex will be attending the conference "Exploring the Transient Universe with the Roman Space Telescope,” presenting on "Automating the Search for Rapidly-Evolving Transients with Roman”. This award is possible due to the generosity of the friends and family of Prof. Lew Snyder...

Visit https://dixongraphics.printavo.com/merch/department-of-astronomy to purchase Astronomy branded apparel.

Prof. Charles Gammie will be giving a lecture on Black Holes on October 7, 11:00 am. The Center for Advanced Studies is sponsoring this talk. Click here for more information.

Astronomy professor Xin Liu has been promoted to Associate Professor. Congratulations, Xin!

Professor Yue Shen will be giving a lecture on Black Holes on September 16, 11:00 am. The Center for Advanced Studies is sponsoring this talk. Read here for more information.

Although we would have loved to invite everyone back to campus to celebrate our 100th anniversary, with the pandemic it was not possible. Instead, we held a virtual celebration of the Department of Astronomy’s 100th year on August 21st. We shared some history, some stories of our graduates, and some ideas for our future. We were so happy to see everyone and to hear many great stories while we...

Congratulations to Alex Gagliano, NSF Graduate Fellow at Astronomy Illinois for winning the "Best Student Paper" award at The American Statistical Association Astrostatistics Interest Group 2021 Joint Statistical Meeting!