Announcing the Doc Losh Undergraduate Student Support Fund

The Department is honoring legendary Astronomy Professor Hazel "Doc" Losh for her commitment to undergraduate education with the Losh Undergraduate Student Support Fund. Read more about the fund, or share some memories of this great teacher.

Congratulations Graduates!

Congratulations and best of luck to our 2012 graduates, Christopher Davis, Andrew Graus, Danish Iqbal, and Harrison Smith.

Welcome Incoming Graduate Students!

The Department of Astronomy would like to welcome our incoming graduate students for fall 2012: Vivienne Baldassare,Traci Johnson, Marina Kounkel, Hui Li, Kamber Schwarz, Meghin Spencer and Huy-Sinh Trung.

Powerful Winds From a Small Black Hole

Graduate student Ashley King and professor Jon Miller were part of a team that discovered a relatively small black hole with the fastest wind ever seen. Read more about extreme black hole wind...

Reconstructing a Distant Galaxy

PostDoc Keren Sharon is lead author on a paper detailing a highly accurate method for reconstructing a distant galaxy, which is only visible because it is lensed by a galaxy cluster. Read More about reconstructing the image of a galaxy...

Star formation not primarily quenched by black hole activity in nearby
elliptical galaxies

Two new papers place a lower limit on the number of nearby elliptical galaxies with central supermassive black holes, and suggest that the large-scale environment matters more to their star formation rate than does low-level black hole activity. Read more about observations of elliptical galaxies...

An Unusual Planetary Disk

Professor Emeritus Charles Cowley led an international team of astronomers who discovered a very unusual disk around another star. Read more about the unusual disk...

New Concentration and Minor

The department is pleased to announce the addition of a new concentration and minor, Interdisciplinary Astronomy, for students with an interest in Astronomy but who do not plan to become astrophysicists. Check out the flyer too!

The jobless rate for students with science degrees is very low (0% for the traditional astronomy and astrophysics major!) so it's well worth considering this new concentration as an adjunct to another program.