Spotlight
Astrophoto Videos from Adam Block
Astrophotographer Adam Block of Steward Observatory has produced two videos using the Pomenis 180mm astrograph for wide-field imaging and the Mt Lemmon Sky Center telescopes for the higher-resolution imaging. The first video, HERE, is of the region of the constellation of Orion. The second, HERE, is of the region of the constellation Serpens. You can see more images HERE. The movies, images and cover photo here are all courtesy/copyright Adam Block.
Applications Being Accepted for Strittmatter Fellowship
The University of Arizona Dept of Astronomy and Steward Observatory is seeking applicants for the Peter A Strittmatter Fellowship for Advanced Study in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The job ad can be found HERE. For more information, please contact Professor Feryal Ozel (fozel) or Dr. Jared Males (jrmales). (Add "@email.arizona.edu" to the prefix in the previous sentence.)
Assistant Professor Peter Behroozi Wins Packard Fellowship
We are pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Peter Behroozi is part of a nationwide class of 22 early-career scientists to be awarded a Packard Fellowship. He is one of only four astronomers to get this five-year, $875000 award in 2019. You can read about the Packard HERE and Daniel Stolte's UANews story HERE.
Part of Peter's research will be to try to understand how supermassive black holes form so quickly in the early universe. Observations by others have shown that by the time the universe is 700 million years old (5% of its current age), there already exist supermassive black holes large enough to power the most luminous quasars. Current physical models simply cannot make such large black holes on the timescales that Nature does. Peter and his graduate student, Haowen Zhang, will attack this problem in the following way: "We are going to use our experience in creating millions of virtual universes containing billions of galaxies and apply it to generating new synthetic universes, this time filled with black holes," Peter says. "We will then compare our results to observational data of active, supermassive black holes and quasars at different times as well as to black holes closer to home."
Please join us in congratulating Peter. Peter joins Astronomy/Steward Professors Dennis Zaritsky (1997) and Xiaohui Fan (2004) as Packard winners.
Ruth McCutcheon
We are sad to tell you that our friend and colleague, Ruth McCutcheon, the Director of Development for the Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, passed away on July 29, 2019, after a courageous battle with cancer. We offer our deepest condolences to her children Grace and Henry, and to her parents Jim and Martha McCutcheon. Ruth was a leader in our efforts to connect with public and philanthropic contributors supporting the Department and Steward Observatory. Her ability to build positive relationships between individuals and communities will be greatly missed by all of us.
Ruth, with the help of her family and friends, recently created the Ruth McCutcheon Steward Observatory Postdoctoral Fellows Research Endowment to help support the research of our Steward Observatory Prize Postdoctoral Fellows and postdoctoral researchers of Steward Observatory in general. Our academic community is brightened and strengthened by the presence and activities of our Fellows. We are grateful that Ruth recognized their key contributions and singled them out for her support. Please consider making a donation, in Ruth's honor, to this endowment.
HERE is a photo of Ruth in front of the oven at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona. HERE is a photo of Ruth doing what she loved best, communicating with people.
Yours most sincerely,
Buell Jannuzi
Head, Department of Astronomy
Director, Steward Observatory
(the eclipse photo of Ruth was taken by Alan Strauss, the other two linked photos by Cathi Duncan, and the front-page photo by Frank Gacon)
Arizona Illustrated and Telumundo Visit Mt Lemmon Sky Center
In October Arizona Illustrated visited the Mount Lemmon Sky Center and did a feature on the public observing done there. You can see the video HERE. In addition, a similar spot was filmed during summer shutdown 2019, in Spanish, and shown on Telemundo.
(The photo is a screenshot from the Arizona Illustrated video.)
2019-2020 First-Year Grad Students
Another academic year has begun. Here are two photos of our first-year class. Photo 1 is the formal photo and Photo 2 is the proof that our students can fly.
From left to right: Quentin Socia, Logan Pearce, Cameron White, Spencer Scott, Victoria Jones, Jiachuan Xu, Justin Kang, Pranjal Rajendra Singh and Zuyi Chen.
(Photos are courtesy Michelle Cournoyer.)
Pages
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
Find telescopes and instruments, telescope time applications, staff and mountain contacts, and faculty and staff scientific interests.
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}