News

NASA announced the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope mission has passed the final stage of review and will launch as a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope in the 2020s. University of Illinois astronomy professor Ryan Foley is heading up one of the science investigation teams for WFIRST.

After years of preparatory studies, NASA is formally starting an astrophysics mission designed to help unlock the secrets of the universe -- the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

The Astronomy Department will host the first "Astronomy on Tap," a monthly informal discussion about some of the biggest questions in the Universe, on Thursday, Feb 18, 6-7 pm in the back room of Pizza M at 208 W. Main St. in Urbana. Future sessions will be held the third Thursday of each month.

Following the detection of the first gravitational wave event by LIGO on Sept. 16, 2015, the Dark Energy Survey team, including astronomers at Illinois, rapidly turned the DECam to that sky region to search for a visible light counterpart. No event was found, but is a model for future follow-ups.

For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at the Earth from the merger of black holes in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and opens a new window to the cosmos.

A detailed study of young stars and their surroundings has produced dramatic new evidence about how the dusty disks that are the raw material for planets grow. The team, led by Dominique Segura-Cox, found that the disks around some of the protostars are larger than some theoretical models predict.

Using new images that show unprecedented detail, scientists have found that material rotating around a very young protostar probably has dragged in and twisted magnetic fields from the surrounding area. Illinois astronomers Leslie Looney and Erin Cox lead the team studying the protostar.

Catalogs of galaxies and stars derived from the data collected during the Dark Energy Survey’s science verification season prior to beginning official observations have been released to the public. Astronomy buffs can download the data from NCSA, which manages data processing and archiving for DES.

Prof. Ben McCall has been elected as a Fellow to the Optical Society. Prof. McCall is being honored specifically for the development of ultrasensitive, ultrahigh resolution molecular ion spectroscopy methods that help elucidate chemical and physical conditions in interstellar clouds.

Prof. Felipe Menanteau and the Dark Energy Survey team use supercomputers to map the Universe and find its ingredients.  Menanteau (right) is a Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and Research Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Illinois. He studies the Universe, so he spends...

Congratulations to the Astronomy Class of 2017 for a job well done! Best wishes on your future endeavors--you make us proud!

New measurements from data processed at the University of Illinois verify the theory that 26 percent of the universe is in the form of mysterious dark matter and that space is filled with an also-unseen dark energy, which is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe and makes up 70 percent of the universe’s contents.

Dom Segura-Cox has won the 2017 Mr. and Mrs. Hsiang-Pai and Wen-Hua Chu Department of Astronomy Excellence in Research Graduate Student Award. Congratulations, Dom!