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Spotlight

First Year Grad Students Celebrate Being at Steward

Our Fall 2014 class of new graduate students has arrived. They're working hard, but are happier than ever!

First Row: Rachel Smullen, Ekta Patel, Christine O'Donnell, Yifan Zhou
Second Row: Rixin Li, Jianwei Lyu, Mengtao Tang, Eckhart Spalding

University of São Paulo joins GMT

 

The Giant Magellan Telescope has just taken another step towards completion by welcoming the University of São Paulo, funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation of Brazil, into the collaboration. Other GMT partners are The University of Arizona, Astronomy Australia Limited, The Australian National University, The Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard University, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, the Smithsonian Institution, Texas A&M University, the University of Chicago, the University of Texas at Austin.

Initial preparations of the mountain site at Cerro Las Campanas have been completed, with construction expected in 2015. The first four mirrors (of seven) will be installed into the telescope for observing in 2021. One of the initial four mirrors is complete, two are being ground and polished, and the fourth is to be cast in early 2015.

 

 

The official press release can be found HERE

The GMT website is HERE

The NY Times article on giant new telescopes is found HERE

Tom Beal's Arizona Daily Star article on the telescope and partners is HERE

Aug 4 LA Times article about GMT can be found HERE

New Planetarium Projector at Flandrau

Flandrau Planetarium now has a state of the art projector, retiring the venerable analog projector. This photo shows Tom Fleming teaching Daniel Apai the tricks of the trade. Read Tom Beal's article HERE

Chris Impey Discusses Active Learning in a Variety of Contexts

In this article by Tom Beal about Professor Chris Impey, we see the notion of active learning in a variety of contexts, and the difficulty of implementing such a process, or even the concentration/determination needed to succeed, in MOOCs. Beal also mentions several of Prof. Impey's books. The article can be found HERE

Image: Courtesy Chris Impey

NSF Finalizes Funding - LSST Construction to Start

LSST, whose complicated primary-tertiary mirror was cast and polished in the Steward Mirror Lab, is the endpoint of a long process that began with a telescope design by Steward Professors Roger Angel and Mike Lesser, and Roland Sarlot and Roger Dunham. It was later improved and refined by optical designers at other LSST institutions. Private support also arrived at the right time to keep the project moving forward. Finally, the construction can begin, with the telescope expected to be on-sky for shakedown in 2019. The big survey is expected to begin in early 2022. The UANews article can be found HERE.

Image:Todd Mason, Mason Productions Inc./LSST Corporation

We're Focused on the Future

A UA Astronomy Major is visible all over Tucson and Phoenix, thanks to her image on a SunTran and a ValleyMetro bus. Student Megan Nieberding is seen posing at the eyepiece of the 21" Ray White Telescope on Campus. Our astronomy majors are doing front-line research and ending up with great careers, and now the major population centers of Arizona know about Megan and implicitly about the Dept of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. Photo: Paul O'Mara, UA University Relations

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