Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Joseph Masiero

NASA scientist to present Friedman Lecture in Astronomy on April 10

4/2/18

Joseph Masiero, a staff scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will give a free presentation titled "You Can't Make a Solar System without Breaking a Few Asteroids" at 7:30 p.m. April 10 in 100 Thomas Building at University Park. The event is part of the 2017-18 Friedman Lecture Series in Astronomy.

Randall McEntaffer works on WRX instrument

NASA set to launch Penn State-led experiment

3/26/18

NASA will launch a suborbital sounding rocket carrying a Penn State-led experiment to test a newly developed X-ray spectrograph and study the X-rays from a supernova remnant in the Milky Way galaxy.

Artist's illustration of stars throughout the universe, showing the Milky Way in the center

New quest to map stars and galaxies across the entire sky

11/16/17

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced a $16 million grant to support the next generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) — a project including Penn State scientists that is one of the most successful and influential efforts to map the universe in the history of astronomy.

Comparison of Keplar-13Ab

Astronomers discover 'sunscreen snow' falling on hot exoplanet

10/26/17

Astronomers at Penn State have used the Hubble Space Telescope to find a blistering-hot giant planet outside our solar system where the atmosphere "snows" titanium dioxide — the active ingredient in sunscreen. This discovery, and other observations made by the Penn State team, provide insight into the complexity of weather and atmospheric composition on exoplanets, and may someday be useful for gauging the habitability of Earth-size planets.

Telescope pointed at the sky.

You can see that from here

10/5/17

A new, low-cost attachment to telescopes allows previously unachievable precision in ground-based observations of exoplanets -- planets beyond our solar system. With the new attachment, ground-based telescopes can produce measurements of light intensity that rival the highest quality photometric observations from space.

black-and-white illustration of dynamic circular movements of two black holes as the are drawn close to each other in the moments just before their climactic merger

Penn State LIGO scientists join celebration of 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics

10/4/17

Penn State scientists and students on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory team (LIGO) are celebrating three LIGO leaders who have been honored with the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selected the three -- Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne -- "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves," which were predicted more than a century ago by Albert Einstein but were impossible to detect until the LIGO detectors accomplished the feat in 2015.

Wolszczan presented with Bohdan Medal

Alexander Wolszczan awarded Bohdan Paczynski Medal

9/29/17

Alexander Wolszczan, Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, was honored as the third laureate of the Bohdan Paczynski Medal, the highest distinction awarded by the Polish Astronomical Society. The Bohdan Paczynski Medal is awarded for exceptional achievements in astronomy and astrophysics every other year.

Chad Hanna demonstrates gravitational waves via ripples in water

New gravitational wave hits Earth

9/27/17

For the first time, three detectors have tracked the gravitational waves emitted by a merger of two black holes -- a critical new capability that allows scientists to more closely locate a gravitational wave's birthplace in space. Gravitational waves are ripples in space and time created when two massive, compact objects such as black holes merge.

Image of Earth showing North and South America on a black background with faint white streak representing cosmic rays streaming toward the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina

Mystery solved: Super-energetic space particles crash to Earth from far away

9/21/17

Super-energetic space particles, which were thought to have been blasted toward Earth from somewhere outside our solar system, now have been discovered to have origins very far beyond our entire galaxy. The discovery was made by an international team that includes Penn State scientists and the Pierre Auger Collaboration, using the largest cosmic-ray instrument ever built.

Dr. Agnès Kim

Penn State astrophysicist receives Dr. Richard J. and Sally Matthews Award

6/26/17

Agnès Kim, assistant professor of physics at Penn State Worthington Scranton, is the recipient of the 2017 Dr. Richard J. and Sally Matthews Award for Scholarly Activity. The award is given each year to a member of the campus faculty in recognition of his/her scholarly and research activities.

In this time-lapse movie from 8 Hubble Space Telescope images, in the blackness of space a white dot -- the white dwarf star Stein 2051 B -- moves in an arc as it passes in front of a distant star. Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Sahu (STScI)

New way to weigh a white dwarf: Use the Hubble Space Telescope

6/8/17

For the first time, astronomers have used a novel method to determine the mass of a type of star known as a "white dwarf" -- the shrunken corpse of a dead star that used to be like our sun. The achievement, made with the Hubble Space Telescope, is described as "a wonderful confirmation of theoretical predictions, and a beautiful reprise of the Einstein solar eclipse observations of a century ago."

Two orbs: a larger white one on the left depicting a sun and a smaller red/orange one on the right depicting a super-hot planet surrounded by a faint red cloud. Black background

New planet found to be hotter than most stars

6/6/17

A newly discovered Jupiter-like world is so hot that even its nights are like the flame of a welding torch. Planet KELT-9b is hotter than most stars. With a day-side temperature of more than 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit (4,600 Kelvin), it is only about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 Kelvin) cooler than our own sun.

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