Congratulations to the Astronomy Class of 2019! Best wishes on your future endeavors--you make us proud! Twelve Astronomy and CS+Astronomy seniors graduated on May 12, 2019 at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The students include John Aulabaugh, Brittany Glodowski, Nathan Knipfer, Ashvini Krishnan, Xincheng Lin, Yuanze Luo, Arun Madhavan, Emily Ng, Alexander Novak, Kunal Patnaik, Aaron...

Congratulations to Prof. Xin Liu for being awarded the prestigious Arnold O. Beckman Research Award for her project "A Systematic Search of Binary Supermassive Black Holes in the Dark Energy Survey".   This Campus Research Board award comes with a substantial budget for both undergraduates and graduate students to increase their engagement in this exciting project.

The 2019 Astronomy Awards have been announced:   The Layla S. Ryan scholarship is awarded annually to a student who is a Junior or Senior major or minor in Astronomy with a minimum GPA of 2.75 and exhibits community service participation. This year's awardee is Lina Florez.         The Stanley Wyatt Memorial Award is presented annually to the...

The Event Horizon Telescope Project announced that it has captured the first image of a black hole. The feature is located at the center of Messier 87 – a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian spoke with University of Illinois physics and astronomy professor Charles Gammie, who heads up the theory working group for the large,...

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences around the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. The image...

Prof. Tony Wong spent some time recently at the Next Generation School teaching the STEAM students about telescopes. Read all about it here.

Four professors, one instructor, and one TA are on the Fall 2018 Excellent Teacher list. Professors Bryan Dunne and Brian Fields were listed as Outstanding. Others on the list include: Professors Charles Gammie, Joaquin Vieira, and Tony Wong, Instructor Amanda Winans, and TA Melanie Archipley. Congratulations to all!

Illinois Prof Looney was among the science team that released a beautiful image of the dust inferred magnetic field in two galaxies. The Cigar Galaxy (M82), shown here, has its large-scale magnetic field following the bipolar outflows (red) generated by the intense nuclear starburst. Read more...

Department of Astronomy Professor Charles Gammie has been selected for a prestigious Associate Research Appointment in the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) during the 2019-2020 academic year.   Tenured faculty with winning proposals are appointed Associates and awarded one semester of release time to pursue their projects in the coming academic year.  In accordance with the Center’s...

Illinois Profs Looney and Crutcher and grad student Erin Cox were among the science team that released a beautiful image of the dust inferred magnetic field in the Orion nebula using SOFIA HAWC+ observations. Prof. Looney is a co-I of the HAWC+ instrument, producing the cryogenic motors for the instrument at Illinois....

  2018 Illinois Ph.D. Erin Cox has been awarded the 2018 Robert L. Brown Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award (sponsored by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory) for her thesis entitled “Probing Planetary Disks: from Birth to Protoplanets.” The awards committee released the following: “Her thesis was selected for its clear objectives and thoughtful observational approach.  Her...

The Dark Energy Survey recently finished with observations (taken over 6 years and cataloging hundreds of millions of galaxies), and Illinois astronomers (including Profs. Athol Kemball, Xin Liu, Paul Ricker, Yue Shen, and Joaquin Vieira) are using this large data for new exciting science results, such as discovering close binary supermassive black holes in the center of distant...

Globular star clusters are favorite targets for amateur sky watchers. To the naked eye they appear as fuzzy-looking stars. Through a small telescope they resolve into glittering snowball-shaped islands of innumerable stars crowded together. About 150 globular star clusters orbit our Milky Way, like bees buzzing around a hive. They are the earliest homesteaders of our galaxy,...

Yixian Cao earned her PhD on November 15, 2018. The title of her defense was "Spatially Resolved Study of Molecular Isotopologue 13CO In Nearby Galaxies". Congratulations, Yixian!

Graduate student, Daniel George, successfully defended his thesis on Oct. 22, 2018. The title of his defense was "Enabling Real-time Multimessenger Astrophysics via Numerical Relativity and Deep Learning". At the end of the month, he will head to California to work at Google X. Congratulations, Daniel!