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On August 25, 2021, we welcomed the second-year grad students and new grad students back to campus after this long COVID closure. The photo above shows both groups of students: (from left to right) Xiangyu Jin, Hayden Foote, Jasmin Washington, Vivian Carvajal, Maria Gabriela Cota, Jeniveve Pearson, Christa DeCoursey, Jake Helton, Rebecca Minsley, Maria Pudoka, Joe Adamo, Nick Schragal, Yu-Hsiu Huang, Evan Mayer, Yang Sun.

(Not pictured - first-year students: Donghyeon (Jeff) Khim, Chia-Lin Ko second-year students: Haley Bowden, Soley Hyman, Aafaque Khan, Sophie Lebowitz, Matthew Murphy, Lily Whitler)

A more formal photo of the first-year students can be seen HERE, with the second-year students HERE.

/first-and-second-year-grad-students-back-campus
The highest resolution image of Centaurus A obtained with the Event Horizon Telescope on top of a color composite image of the entire galaxy. R. Bors; ESO/WFI; MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A. Weiß et al.; NASA/CXC/CfA/R. Kraft et al.; EHT/M. Janßen et al.

Recent News/Press Releases from Dept. Astronomy/Steward Observatory

Several recent research press releases or popular articles from Dept of Astronomy and Steward Observatory (hit "more" for the full set of press releases):

1) Sixiang Wen and Ann Zabludoff study a tidal disruption event  and find an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole. This study also appeared in Sky and Telescope:

2) (Whitaker et al) including current and former Steward/NOIRLab people Christina Williams, Justin Spilker, Desika Narayanan, Alexandra Pope, and Rachel Bezanson:

Galaxies that shut down star formation in the relatively early Universe  https://news.arizona.edu/story/dead-galaxies-mysteriously-ran-out-fuel-make-stars-early-universe

3) Marcia Rieke and JWST:

"James Webb Space Telescope: An astronomer on the team explains how to send a giant telescope to space – and why"

4) Atlas Obscura visits the Mirror Lab  (15 min audio only) (featuring Buddy Martin)

5) Structure of the jet in the Cen A black hole from Event Horizon Telescope data

Work by a large consortium including many  UArizona scientists: Dan Marrone and Chi-Kwan Chan are quoted in the UANews article.

    "Event Horizon Telescope Pinpoints Heart of the Nearest Radio Galaxy" 

    "Event Horizon Telescope Reveals Curious Jet Structure from Black Hole" 

6) "Organic Molecules Offer Clues About Dying Stars and Outskirts of the Milky Way"

Lucy Ziurys and colleagues map organic molecules in planetary nebulae. Also grad student Lilia Koelemay finds organic molecules out to 20 kpc from the Milky Way center using the Arizona Radio Observatory12-m on Kitt Peak.

7) "Instrument Ready to Discover New Planets" 

Chad Bender (the instrument scientist) and Tarin Esplin are quoted here. This is a new planet-finding spectrograph on the WIYN telescope.

 

 

2021 Department of Astronomy PhD Graduates. Left:courtesy Michelle Cournoyer. Right: courtesy Buell Jannuzi.

Graduation 2021

In May 2021 we celebrated the following students receiving degrees: seventeen undergrad Astronomy Majors, one Astronomical Studies minor,  six Astronomy minors, five graduate students who defended in Summer 2020, two who graduated in May 2021, and three who will graduate very soon.

Professor Don McCarthy organized another great virtual  departmental graduation with Nobel Laureate (and former Hubble Fellow at The University of Arizona) Dr Andrea Ghez as the main speaker. You can see a video of the graduation HERE. A transacript of Dr Ghez's talk can be read HERE.

Congratulations to the undergraduate majors and minors and recent PhDs. 

Undergrad Majors: Magda Fernanda Andrade Alcantar, Sarah Renee DeSantis, Danielle Ashley Dickinson, Carter Scott Eckel, Maria Elise Galloway-Sprietsma, Savannah Rose Gramze, Aaron Benjamin Granados, Emery Mark Gunselman, Michael Morgan Hardegree-Ullman, Grace Catherine Hathaway, Adrien Masini, Caroline Elizabeth McCormick, Shavonne Marie Morin, Alexander Ruthford, Wesley Jordan Smith, Nicholas Edward Thompson, Jeffrey Robert Vickroy.

Minors: Paul Rogers is the Astronomical Studies Minor. The Astronomy minors are Alyssa Baller, Jodi Kreiner, Anya Lundstrom, Kaili Martinez, Kaylah McGowan, and Linpeng Sun.

Doctoral students receiving PhDs since graduation 2020 include Rixin Li, Christine O’Donnell, Peter Senchyna, Rachel Smullen, Eckhart Spalding, and  Alex Bixel. Nico Garavito Camargo will graduate in late May, with Chris Bilinski, Jennifer Kadowaki, and Michael Hammer to soon follow.

The Dept. of Astronomy and Steward Observatory is hosting three talks in April.

The final, upcoming public talk for April, to be given in Spanish, is by Prof. Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, UC Santa Cruz, on April 26, at 7:30pm. The Youtube link for this upcoming talk is HERE. The Flyer, in Spanish, is HERE.

The other two events have passed but you can watch the archived talks at the links below:

The first, on April 5, at 7:30pm MST (note that Arizona does not keep  Daylight Saving Time) is by Dr Kevin Wagner, entitled "Imaging New Worlds in the Alpha Centauri System." The Zoom address of the archived talk is HERE. 

The second, on April 12, at 7:30pm MST on Zoom (archived talk video is HERE) is by Professor Chris Impey. It's the 60th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight: Chris's talk is entitled: "Our Future in Space." You can see the talk flyer HERE.

 

/Upcoming-Public-Talks

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