UA Science

You are here

A quasar is a galactic object with a supermassive black hole in the center. International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld, CC BY-NC-SA

Powerful black holes might grow up in bustling galactic neighborhoods

Dr. Jaclyn Champagne, our JASPER post-doc researcher in the UA Astronomy Department, is hard at work using James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data to map out rapidly forming galaxy neighborhoods—protoclusters—and to understand if these cosmic cities are the birthplace of extraordinarily luminous quasars. The wide-field slitless spectrograph aboard JWST has revolutionized the search for these galactic neighborhoods in the early universe, where astronomers are observing “colliding galaxies, growing black holes and great swarms of gas that will eventually become the next generation of stars.” Learn about Jackie’s work in her latest article for The Conversation, here.

The Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. The LBTI instrument combines infrared light from both 8.4-meter mirrors to image planets and disks around young and nearby stars.

Scientists have long thought that spiral arms in protoplanetary disks could be caused by nascent planets, yet none had been detected until now.

"Our study puts forward a solid piece of evidence that these spiral arms are caused by giant planets," said Kevin Wagner, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the UArizona Steward Observatory. Learn more

The GUSTO Team with the payload.

GUSTO Balloon Observatory Mission Ships Out in Preparation for Antarctic Launch

On July 3, the integrated gondola and payload for NASA’s Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO) was shipped from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, on a long route to Antarctica.
GUSTO is an observatory that will fly on a Long-Duration Balloon (LDB) to around 120,000 feet in the air to study the interstellar medium — the matter between the stars — using far infrared detectors. This mission represents a joint effort between NASA, the University of Arizona and Johns Hopkins APL.
The gondola carrying the payload was designed and built at APL by a team of Space Exploration Sector (SES) and Research and Exploratory Development Department (REDD) staff members. Kieran Hegarty, the GUSTO program manager from SES, noted that the seven-year-old mission was long in coming, after the pandemic and technical issues delayed the launch by several years.
Artist's rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope observing in space.

'Cosmic lens' reveals distant galaxies and helps astronomers better understand dark matter

The Fishhook. The Thin One. These are just two of several striking-looking targets revealed by a cluster of galaxies so massive that it acts as a gravitational lens, literally bending light around it and revealing distant and dusty objects too faint and too distant to be seen otherwise.

A new image of this galaxy cluster, known as El Gordo (Spanish for The Big One), taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, shows a variety of unusual, distorted galaxies – 62 in all – behind the cluster that were only hinted at in previous Hubble Space Telescope images.

El Gordo is a cluster of hundreds of galaxies that existed when the universe was 6.2 billion years old, according to Brenda Frye, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory and lead author of one of four papers published about the cluster in The Astrophysical Journal.

Read more

A New thin-lensed telescope design could far surpass James Webb - Goodbye Mirrors, Hello Diffractive Lenses. Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of the solar system to date. The grand question is whether any of these planets are home to life. To find the answer, astronomers will likely need more powerful telescopes than exist today. Learn more

The nearby supernova SN 2023ixf (the bright, bluish burst of light at lower left), as seen nestled in the spiral arms of the Pinwheel Galaxy by the Gemini North telescope. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image Processing: J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Rodriguez (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)/(CC BY 4.0)

Nearby Supernova Gives Unique View of a Dying Star's Last Days

Steward Observatory Astronomers Griffin Hosseinzadeh and Azalee Bostroem are piecing together the final moments of supernova 2023ixf and learning more about it than any other in recent history. “It’s telling us how stars lose mass, which has a big influence on how galaxies evolve,” says Azalee Bostroem.

Learn more:

Left: Giant Magellan Telescope cross-section rendering. Right: Drone image of the GMT site in Chile.

New $2 Billion Telescope will be fitted with a 'Large Earth Finder'

Seven of the world’s largest mirrors that make-up one giant 80 feet/25.4 meter diameter mirror. Fourteen stories high and weighing 2,100 tons. With four times the resolving power of the James Webb Space Telescope.

The Giant Magellan Telescope is gradually taking shape on a mountain top 8,255 feet/2,516 meters up at Las Campanas Observatory, northeast of La Serena in Chile.

Why? To image planets in other star systems close-up to see if they’re Earth-like and habitable.

‘Extremely large’ era begins

The Giant Magellan Telescope is one of a handful of what astronomers imaginatively call “extremely large” ground-based telescopes that are going to change astrophysics by producing higher resolution images that make it easier to find Earth-like planets around other stars.

Read more here

University of Arizona Regents Professors Marcia and George Rieke have each been recognized with NASA Distinguished Public Service Medals for their contributions to the field of astronomy and their key roles in the development of cutting-edge instruments for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST.

The medals, awarded this month, are the highest distinction the agency bestows upon nongovernmental personnel.

In addition to the Riekes, UArizona alumna Jane Rigby, who serves as the operations project scientist for JWST, was honored with the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for her scientific contributions and leadership. Rigby, who graduated with a doctorate in astronomy from UArizona in 2006, has played a pivotal role in the successful transition of JWST from commissioning to routine science observations. Her work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has been crucial to ensuring the seamless operation of the space observatory.

Marcia Rieke – as the principal investigator who led the development of JWST's Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam – has demonstrated unparalleled dedication and leadership, according to her nomination for the medal. The NIRCam project, considered the most challenging instrument development effort in the JWST program, proved to be 10 times more complex than initially anticipated.

In his capacity as the science team lead for JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, George Rieke has been instrumental in facilitating international collaboration among 10 European countries and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Over the course of five decades with the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Steward Observatory, the Riekes, a husband-and-wife research team, helped the field of infrared astronomy – once a niche endeavor fraught with extreme technical challenges – flourish into a powerful discipline that has allowed scientists to see the universe in ways that were once deemed impossible.

Marcia Rieke's unwavering focus, diligence and hands-on approach in the face of formidable technical and programmatic challenges set a remarkable example for her peers, according to the award notification from NASA. In addition to her work on NIRCam, she has made significant contributions as the deputy principal investigator for the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, or NICMOS, on the Hubble Space Telescope and as a co-investigator on the Multiband Imaging Photometer instrument, or MIPS, on the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope. Her influential role in advancing the field of infrared astronomy is widely recognized.

With JWST, Marcia Rieke hopes to discover the most distant and therefore earliest and youngest galaxies in the universe, and trace how they changed over time. She also researches the atmospheres of exoplanets – planets outside of the solar system –to understand what they are made of.

"After so many years of anticipation, finally seeing galaxies at an age of only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang has been the culmination of my career," she said. "Seeing the happy faces of my team says it all."

George Rieke played a vital role in coordinating the construction of the MIRI instrument, successfully uniting diverse teams. His award citation highlights his exceptional leadership, visionary approach and willingness to collaborate beyond his official responsibilities, acting as the "U.S. PI (principal investigator) for MIRI." He has also made significant contributions to infrared astronomy as the principal investigator for Spitzer's MIPS instrument.

George Rieke says he is excited about JWST's capabilities to look at the evolution of the central massive black holes in galaxies. By combining previous radio, optical, ultraviolet and X-ray observations with those from JWST, his team is looking for elusive, very young black holes that are likely to be deeply shrouded in gas and dust that absorbs nearly all their output and emits it in the infrared where MIRI can find them. His team is also exploring small bodies, such as asteroids, in planetary systems outside of our solar system.

"It is so exciting not just for me but for our entire research group to see so many aspects of astronomical sources that were completely out of reach to us before the launch of JWST," George Rieke said. "It took 50 years to make this happen, but what a fantastic reward."

Rigby is known for her groundbreaking research on using gravitational lensing to study galaxies in the early universe. This work, which originated during her doctoral studies at UArizona, has continued through her leadership of the JWST project TEMPLATES, which stands for Targeting Extremely Magnified Panchromatic Lensed Arcs and their Extended Star Formation. TEMPLATES leverages JWST's Near-Infrared Spectrograph and MIRI to obtain high-resolution spectral images of gravitationally lensed galaxies. This allows Rigby and her team to construct images of early-universe galaxies that are much more detailed than what would be possible to observe with conventional imaging techniques.

Rigby's achievements have garnered numerous accolades, including the NASA Robert H. Goddard Award for Exceptional Achievement for Science, Nature's 10 Ones to Watch in 2022, BBC's 100 Women and other honors. She also had the honor of presenting and explaining the first JWST results to President Joe Biden.

"All of us at Steward Observatory are incredibly happy that NASA is recognizing Marcia, George and Jane for their major contributions to JWST," said Buell T. Jannuzi, director of Steward Observatory and head of the Department of Astronomy. "By recognizing their achievements, NASA is also recognizing the teams these three amazing individuals have formed, developed and sustained throughout the years it took to develop, launch and commission JWST. We are looking forward to celebrating with George and Marcia once they receive their medals at Goddard Space Flight Center."

 

A team led by University of Arizona astronomers used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to image the warm dust around a nearby young star, Fomalhaut, to study the first asteroid belt ever seen outside of our solar system in infrared light. The image shows nested concentric rings of dust, some of which had never been seen before. These belts most likely are carved by the gravitational forces produced by embedded, unseen planets.
To the astronomers' surprise, the dusty structures are much more complex than the asteroid and Kuiper dust belts of our solar system. There are three nested belts extending out to 14 billion miles, or 23 billion kilometers, from the star; that's 150 times the distance of Earth from the sun. The scale of the outermost belt is roughly twice the scale of our solar system's Kuiper belt, which consists of small bodies and cold dust beyond Neptune, the outermost known planet. The inner belts in the Fomalhaut system – which had never been seen before – were revealed by Webb for the first time. The results are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The belts encircle the young hot star, which is about 25 light-years from Earth and can be seen with the naked eye as the brightest star in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus. The dusty belts are the debris from collisions of larger bodies, similar to asteroids and comets, and are frequently described as debris disks. Astronomers first discovered Fomalhaut's disk in 1983. But there has never been a view as spectacular - or as reavealing - as Webb's.

"I would describe Fomalhaut as the archetype of debris disks found elsewhere in our galaxy, because it has components similar to those we have in our own planetary system," said lead study author András Gáspár, an assistant astronomer at UArizona's Steward Observatory. "By looking at the patterns in these rings, we can begin to make a little sketch of what a planetary system ought to look like – if we could actually take a deep enough picture to see the suspected planets."
The idea of a protoplanetary disk around a star goes back to the late 1700s when astronomers Immanuel Kant and Pierre-Simon Laplace independently developed the theory that the sun and planets formed from a rotating gas cloud that collapsed and flattened due to gravity. Debris disks develop later, following the formation of planets and once the primordial gas has dispersed. As small bodies like asteroids collide, their surfaces are pulverized into huge clouds of dust and other debris. Observations of their dust provide unique clues to the structure of an exoplanetary system, reaching down to Earth-sized planets and even asteroids, which are much too small to see individually.
Sharp images of the outermost belt around Fomalhaut have previously been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, the Herschel Space Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA. However, none of them found any structure inside of it. The inner belts have been resolved for the first time by Webb in infrared light.
"Where Webb really excels is that we're able to physically resolve the thermal glow from dust in those inner regions," said Schuyler Wolff, an assistant research professor at Steward and a co-author on the paper. "So, you can see inner belts that we could never see before."
Hubble, ALMA and Webb are tag-teaming to assemble a holistic view of the debris disks around a number of stars.
"With Hubble and ALMA, we were able to image a bunch of Kuiper belt analogs, and we've learned loads about how outer disks form and evolve," Wolff said. "But we need Webb to allow us to image a dozen or so asteroid belts elsewhere. We can learn just as much about the inner warm regions of these disks as Hubble and ALMA taught us about the colder outer regions."
These belts most likely are carved by the gravitational forces produced by unseen planets. Similarly, inside our solar system, Jupiter corrals the asteroid belt; the inner edge of the Kuiper belt is sculpted by Neptune, and the outer edge could be shepherded by yet-unseen bodies beyond it. As Webb images more systems, astronomers will gain a more detailed understanding of the configurations of their planets.
"The belts around Fomalhaut are kind of a mystery novel: Where are the planets?" said team member George Rieke, a UArizona Regents Professor of Astronomy who serves as the U.S. science lead for Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, which made these observations. "I think it's not a very big leap to say there's probably a really interesting planetary system around the star."
"We definitely didn't expect the more complex structure with the second intermediate belt and then the broader asteroid belt," added Wolff. "That structure is very exciting because any time an astronomer sees a gap and rings in a disk, they say, 'There could be an embedded planet shaping the rings.'"
Webb also imaged what Gáspár dubs "the great dust cloud" that may be evidence for a collision that occurred in the outer ring between two protoplanetary bodies. This is a different feature from a suspected planet first seen inside the outer ring by Hubble in 2008Subsequent Hubble observations made by Gáspár's team showed that by 2014 the object had vanished. A plausible interpretation is that this newly discovered feature, like the earlier one, is an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles from two icy bodies that smashed into each other.

Friends of Steward Observatory,

Our thanks to all of you who joined us this past Saturday to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the “All American” 36-inch Telescope of Steward Observatory and our recommitment to the research, education, and outreach missions it generated.  We hope you had as much fun as we did

The 36-inch, then a “Telescope of Huge Size,” according to the Arizona Daily Star, was built thanks to the philanthropic gift of $60,000 by Lavinia Steward to the University of Arizona. This enabled Andrew Ellicott Douglass, the first Director of Steward Observatory, to build the University’s first major research telescope.   This was the start of our growth into a world-class Observatory and Department of Astronomy. It paved the way for other major research facilities at the University, and ushered in an era of transformational philanthropic giving to the University.

Today, in honor of our first century and the philanthropic legacy that shaped it, we ask you to consider making a donation that can stimulate a new century of growth that will make as much history as our first 100 years. Our goal is to secure 100 donations by the end of April 30.  We are going to have a time capsule, to be opened on the 200th Anniversary of the dedication, that will have memorabilia from our celebration this past week as well as the names of the donors that participate in this mini-drive — so please consider joining Lavinia Steward among the long line of donors that have enabled us to explore the Universe together.

Sincerely,

Buell Jannuzi and Cathi Duncan

(On behalf of the Committee that Organized our Celebration of the Dedication of the 36-inch Telescope and rededication of Steward Observatory)

 

Be One of 100: Carry Steward into the future!

Pages

Subscribe to Department of Astronomy<br /> and Steward Observatory RSS
For the public
For Public

Public events include our Monday Night Lecture Series, world-reknowned Astronomy Camp and Mt Lemmon Sky Center.

For Students

A good place to start if you want to become an undergrad major or grad student, or need to find our schedule of classes.

 

For Scientists
For Scientists

Find telescopes and instruments, telescope time applications, staff and mountain contacts, and faculty and staff scientific interests.