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Researchers discovered that the atmosphere of exoplanet HD149026b, a ‘hot Jupiter’ orbiting a star comparable to our sun, is super-abundant in the heavier elements carbon and oxygen.
/news/giant-planet-atmospheres-vary-widely-jwst-confirms
Insights from Oumuamua could advance our understanding of planet formation in this solar system and others.
/news/first-known-interstellar-interloper-resembles-dark-comet
Scanning the first images of a well-known early galaxy taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Cornell astronomers were intrigued to see a blob of light near its outer edge.
/news/astronomers-discover-metal-rich-galaxies-early-universe
On Thursday, March 16, join the Cornell community to make a difference for students on Cornell Giving Day.
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A U.S.-New Zealand research team recognized a shift as evidence of “ice pumping” – a process important to the stability of the Ross Ice Shelf.
/news/robot-provides-unprecedented-views-below-antarctic-ice-shelf
Cornell astronomers discovered a companion galaxy estimated at 1.4 billion years old while scanning images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
/news/astronomers-discover-metal-rich-galaxies-early-universe-0
First-of-their-kind observations beneath the floating shelf of a vulnerable Antarctic glacier reveal widespread cracks and crevasses where melting occurs more rapidly, contributing to the glacier’s retreat.
/news/underwater-robot-helps-explain-antarctic-glaciers-retreat
The Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope “will be able to look regularly at frequency ranges very few other telescopes can even detect."
/news/cornell-led-telescope-project-completion-sight
"Close-ups of Jupiter and its gorgeous cloud-tops star in the latest batch of images sent back from NASA’s Juno orbiter."
/news/photos-see-giant-planet-jupiter-looking-its-best-new-images-just-back-nasas-juno-spacecraft
"A Dream of Discovering Alien Life Finds New Hope for Lisa Kaltenegger and her generation of exoplanet astronomers, decades of planning have set the stage for an epochal detection."
/news/dream-discovering-alien-life-finds-new-hope-0
Using computer simulations, Cornell researchers demonstrate that strong reflections can be generated by interference between geological layers, without liquid water or other rare materials.
/news/layering-not-liquid-astronomers-explain-mars-watery-reflections
Faculty respond to the release of the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope.
/news/cornell-astronomers-cheer-new-space-telescopes-first-images
Professor Jayaram N Chengalur will take charge as the 10th director of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).
Chengalur completed his doctoral and postdoctoral studies from Cornell University.
Cornell researchers contributed to the first direct visual evidence of something compact and very massive at the center of the Milky Way.
/news/team-reveals-first-image-black-hole-our-galaxys-heart
J.J. Zanazzi, Ph.D. ’18, has been selected for a 2022 51 Pegasi b Fellowship, which provides exceptional postdoctoral scientists with the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy.
/news/astronomy-alum-chosen-51-pegasi-b-fellowship
On the evening of Dec. 12, 2021, Cornell astronomers Gordon Stacey and Thomas Nikola were dangerously short on time. They’d been awake for nearly 24 hours, with another all-nighter ahead of them.The skin on their hands had dried out and cracked from living for five weeks at a dizzying elevation in Chile’s Atacama Desert. And they were short-...
/news/chasing-data-astronomers-race-explore-ancient-galaxies-0
At a dizzying elevation in Chile, two astronomers had only hours left to collect data from light that had taken 11.5 billion years to reach Earth.
/news/chasing-data-astronomers-race-explore-ancient-galaxies
On Cornell’s eighth Giving Day, held March 16, 15,905 alumni, students, faculty, staff, parents and friends from more than 80 countries made gifts totaling a record-breaking $12,268,629.
/news/more-12m-donated-support-students-24-hours
Gifts allow the College to fulfill its mission: preparing students to do the greatest good in the world.
/news/support-arts-sciences-giving-day-march-16
In this Science article, read about how scientists spotted a set of diagonal fractures in Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier that nearly span the entire shelf.Cornell's Associate Professor Britney Schmidt and research scientist, Peter Washam, sent an instrument-studded robot called Icefin into the ocean finding incursions of warm water beneath the...
/news/ice-shelf-holding-back-keystone-antarctic-glacier-within-years-failure
A $5 million alumni gift will help to support doctoral students in humanities fields within the College of Arts & Sciences.
/news/alumni-gift-supports-doctoral-students-humanities
In this SciTechDaily article, read about how the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) captured an image of the most massive planet-hosting star pair to date, b Centauri and its giant planet b Centauri b.Read the full story in SciTechDaily.
/news/surprise-planet-discovered-around-extreme-star-pair
The program connects undergraduates in A&S with opportunities to work side by side on research with Cornell faculty from across the College.
/news/nexus-scholars-program-applications-now-open
The Nexus Scholars program will leverage the student-to-faculty ratio and the vibrant research enterprise in A&S to expand opportunities for students, while also enhancing the culture of collaborative scholarship at Cornell.
/news/new-program-expands-undergrad-research-opportunities
In this Air & Space Magazine article, read about the upcoming launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope - the most powerful, expensive, and eagerly anticipated telescope ever to gaze out into the universe.Read the full story here.
/news/telescope-will-change-astronomy
The European Astrobiology Network association (EANA) is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. For that reason, EANA organized several special events and activities in 2021. One of these activities was the EANA outstanding paper award contest. The winner has been announced:Fairén et al., “The Complex Molecules Detector (CMOLD): A fluidic-...
/news/mars-research-paper-wins-award
Next month, a European rocket carrying the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch into space. In this New Yorker article, read about lead scientists, including Cornell's Nikole Lewis, who will work with the JWST’s NIRSpec (near-infrared spectrograph) instrument.Read the full story in The New Yorker.
/news/nasas-new-telescope-will-show-us-infancy-universe-0
Saul Teukolsky, the Hans A. Bethe Professor of Physics and Astrophysics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics’ 2021 ICTP Dirac Medal and Prize for his contributions to the detection of gravitational waves.Teukolsky is the first Cornell faculty member to receive the medal, which is...
/news/teukolsky-awarded-2021-dirac-medal-0
Cornell astronomers say the detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus shows evidence of explosive volcanoes on the mysterious planet.
/news/trace-gas-phosphine-points-volcanic-activity-venus
Even the most extreme objects in the universe – including black holes – must obey certain rules.A central law for black holes predicts that the total area of their event horizons – the boundary beyond which nothing can ever escape – should never shrink. This law is Hawking’s area theorem, named after physicist Stephen Hawking, who derived the...
/news/hawkings-black-hole-theorem-observationally-confirmed-0
Professor Nikole Lewis is one of four faculty winners of the 2021 GPSA Faculty Teaching, Advising, and Mentorship Award. This highly competitive award, given by the Graduate and Professional Student Association each year, recognizes outstanding faculty who excel in their teaching, mentorship, and advising of graduate and professional students....
/news/professor-nikole-lewis-wins-award-0
More than a hundred people gathered virtually at the end of April for the 2021 annual conference on the CCAT-prime project, which is building the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) in Chile. “First light” is scheduled for 2023.
/news/annual-conference-new-telescope-moves-science-ahead
Voyager 1 – one of two sibling NASA spacecraft launched 44 years ago and now the most distant human-made object in space – still works and zooms toward infinity.As the craft toils, it has long since zipped past the edge of the solar system through the heliopause – the solar system’s border with interstellar space – into the interstellar medium....
/news/emptiness-space-voyager-1-detects-plasma-hum-1
In this Nature Astronomy paper, Jean-Luc Margot (UCLA), Don Campbell (Cornell Astronomy) and colleagues describe their use of Earth-based radar observations of Venus obtained in 2006-2020 to measure its spin axis orientation, spin precession rate, moment of inertia and length-of-day variations.Full paper here.Also view this NBC News release.
/news/spin-state-and-moment-inertia-venus
One of the key goals of gravitational wave astronomy is to understand and characterize binary black hole spins, according to Vijay Varma, a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in physics in the College of Arts and Sciences.By measuring the masses and spin rates of binary black hole systems in which two of the super-compact astronomical objects orbit each...
/news/black-hole-spin-finding-could-shed-light-relativity-stars-0
More than a dozen space industry leaders, capital investors, startup entrepreneurs, a Jet Propulsions Lab manager and Cornell professors gathered virtually for Cornell’s first Space Tech Industry Day/K.K. Wang Day symposium on April 23 – featuring this year’s event theme, “New Opportunities in Space Technology.”
/news/cosmos-unveils-space-tech-business-science-opportunities
In this Scientific American article, read how Cornell planetary scientist Valerio Poggiali and colleagues analyzed radar scans, which were performed by the Cassini probe in 2014, and estimated the depth in part of Kraken Mare.Read the full story here.
/news/saturn-probe-data-reveal-impressive-depth-titans-larget-seaThe first helicopter ever to fly on another planet will soon attempt its first trip above the surface of Mars. Carried under the belly of the Perseverance rover, the helicopter, a drone-like device named "Ingenuity," will test the feasibility of Mars flight. This is a difficult challenge compared with flight on Earth, because the Martian...
/news/roving-mars-air-and-land-0
A constellation of scientists, technologists and businesses will offer a glimpse into how space will be explored in the years to come during the inaugural Space Tech Industry Day, a virtual symposium hosted by Cornell on April 23.
/news/space-tech-industry-day-convergence-research-business
The Ingenuity helicopter and other rotorcraft could provide reconnaissance for rovers to help guide their routes.
/news/roving-mars-air-and-land
The Cycle 1 General Observers (GO) program at STScI has awarded approximately 6,000 hours to observing programs using the full suite of James Webb Space Telescope instrumentation. Several Cornell Astronomy Department researchers were among the recipients. Read more...
/news/cornell-researchers-awarded-observing-time-jwst
As a 51 Pegasi b Fellow hosted by the astronomy department, Samantha Trumbo ’13, a doctoral student in planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, will follow up on her breakthrough research on Europa and other of Jupiter's moons.
/news/astronomy-host-51-pegasi-b-fellow-samantha-trumbo-13
Jake Turner, a research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science working under Prof. Ray Jayawardhana, has been named a NASA Sagan Fellow. Read more . . .Samantha Trumbo, a doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology, has been named a 51 Pegasi b Fellow, a program hosted by the Astronomy Department in...
/news/cornell-researchers-receive-prestigious-fellowships
“These outstanding young scientists are the future of astrophysics, and their impact on our understanding of the cosmos will be felt for decades to come."
/news/cornell-postdoc-jake-turner-receives-prestigious-nasa-hubble-fellowship
A team of Canadian researchers led by University of Waterloo professor Michel Fich have been awarded $4.9 million in funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to help build a next generation telescope, the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST). Located in Chile, the FYST will give astronomers insight into how the stars and galaxies in...
/news/fys-telescope-partners-canada-receive-new-49-million-grant-0
Far below the gaseous atmospheric shroud on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, lies Kraken Mare, a sea of liquid methane. Cornell astronomers have estimated that sea to be at least 1,000 feet deep near its center – enough room for a potential robotic submarine to explore.After sifting through data from one of the final Titan flybys of the Cassini...
/news/astronomers-estimate-titans-largest-sea-1000-feet-deep-0
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been on a journey to Mars since its launch in July 2020 and is set to land on the red planet on Feb. 18. The rover will look for evidence of ancient life and collect soil and rock samples at a part of Mars just north of its equator known as Jezero Crater — the site of an ancient delta.As part of the mission, Cornell...
/news/perseverances-zoom-cameras-take-historic-focus-mars-0
We hold monthly meetings and all members of the Astronomy Department and the Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science are welcome to join.Learn moreSummary of our last meeting:During the March meeting of the Climate and Diversity Committee, graduate and field assistant representatives on the department admissions committee gave updates...
/news/climate-diversity-committee-updates
Using light from the Big Bang, an international team led by Cornell and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has begun to unveil the material which fuels galaxy formation.“There is uncertainty on the formation of stars within galaxies that theoretical models are unable to predict,” said lead author Stefania Amodeo...
/news/ancient-light-illuminates-matter-fuels-galaxy-formation-0