• Congratulations to Dr. Samantha Thrush!  She successful defended her thesis today with her advisor Prof. Athol Kemball.
     Posted: 2023-04-06
  • A team led by Illinois astronomers Yu-Ching Chen, Prof. Xin Liu and Prof. Yue Shen discovered a rare dual quasar system when the Universe was only 3 billion years old. Their findings are reported in the April 5 issue of Nature. Read more here.
     Posted: 2023-04-05
  • Congratulations to Prof. Decker French! She was awarded a Center for Advanced Study Fellowship. For this fellowship, she will be studying tidal disruption events as supermassive black hole laboratories. Stars passing close enough to a supermassive black hole...
     Posted: 2023-04-04
  • He is the recipient of the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, which supports scholar fellowships at African higher education institutions to foster research collaboration, graduate student teaching/mentoring, and curriculum co-development. Prof. Kemball will have an appointment as Distinguished Professor and the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand,...
     Posted: 2023-03-29
  • He received a prestigious NSF Career Award: Understanding the Nature of Dark Energy with the Young Supernova Experiment and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. These are NSF's most prestigious awards that support early-career faculty who serve as academic role models in research and education and who lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
     Posted: 2023-03-28
  • LAS Quadrangle recently published an article about the Observatory. Read about it here.
     Posted: 2023-03-22
  • Images of deep space have intrigued many a sky-gazer over the course of modern history. The first images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope marked a remarkable moment in space exploration and, more recently, the newly captured snapshots of deep space from the James Webb Space Telescope became a news highlight that reached well beyond typical astronomy audiences. ...
     Posted: 2023-03-15
  • Our own Prof. Decker French will give an astronomy lecture at the Women in Science series. It will be in both in-person and via Zoom. Read more about it here.    
     Posted: 2023-02-02
  • Prof. Telemachos Mouschovias discusses his theoretical work on star formation, focusing on the importance of magnetic fields. Read about it here    
     Posted: 2023-01-10
  • Congratulations to the Astronomy Illinois List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent By Their Students. Faculty: Bryan Dunne, Brian Fields, and Leslie Looney and Grad Students: Erica Albrigo, Xinyang Lu, Grant Merz, and Maggie Verrico.
     Posted: 2023-01-09
  • It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our friend and colleague James B. Kaler, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy. Jim joined the Illinois faculty in 1964, right after finishing his PhD at UCLA with the thesis: "Recombination Spectra of Hydrogen and Helium in Gaseous Nebulae".  Since then, Jim had more than 450 publications ranging from that thesis to explaining "why your...
     Posted: 2022-11-30
  • Congratulations to Dr. Rachel Harrison!  She defended her thesis "Mass Assembly in Protoplanetary Disks: Polarimetry as a Probe of Dust Growth and Accretion" Friday, November 4 with advisor Prof. Leslie Looney.
     Posted: 2022-11-07
  • The Department of Astronomy is excited to be part of the new Data Science majors on campus. Astronomy + Data Science majors will take advantage of astronomy's close ties with data science and the large surveys observing now and over the next few years. Read about it here.
     Posted: 2022-09-27
  • We are excited to announce that the Observatory was awarded a $500,000 grant from the National Park Service. These funds will be used to repair brick and other exterior components that will complement the university's funding to repair the roof. Thanks to Department members Prof. Bryan Dunne and Prof. Leslie Looney and the...
     Posted: 2022-09-14
  • Join Physics and Astronomy Professor Nico Yunes at the William M. Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland College on Sept 2 to discuss the science behind the fun planetarium show Einstein...
     Posted: 2022-08-29