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Twenty new faculty have joined the College of Arts & Sciences this year, strengthening departments and programs with their wide-ranging expertise and filling numerous leadership roles for the College and university.
Cornell College of Arts & Sciences physicist and astronomer David Kornreich, Ph.D. ’01, died Aug. 30 in a plane crash near Ithaca while piloting his aircraft. He was researcher and science communicator known for galaxy studies and astronomy outreach.
NASA’s Psyche mission principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton will deliver the 2026 Terzian Lecture, hosted by the astronomy department in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences. She will discuss the spacecraft’s journey to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche and upcoming discoveries.
Targeting launch Aug. 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will attempt to directly image a set of exoplanets selected with help from Cornell faculty member Dmitry Savransky. Cornell College of Arts and Sciences astronomy doctoral students supported the work.
Season 2 of Cornell's Research Matters podcast launches Aug. 25 with 18 episodes on how academic discoveries translate into practical insights that shape everyday life and society. Cornell College of Arts and Sciences faculty from astronomy, government, physics and psychology will be featured in the new season.
Together the Department of Astronomy and Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science represent one of the world’s leading institutes for space science with over 110 active researchers. Research emphases include cosmology, solar system exploration, exoplanet science, and fundamental astrophysics. Graduate students, early career researchers and undergraduates, are actively engaged in current NASA missions, NSF consortia, and CCAT-Prime/FYST. The department and center also run an extensive and robust outreach program to the broader community.
Since the early days of modern cosmic exploration, Cornell scientists have led the way, from guiding rovers through the red dust of Mars to searching for other life in the universe; and from modeling exotic stars to detecting the faint ripples of gravitational waves.
They’ve also established important centers of research, with the Cornell-led Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) in Chile poised to become the next innovator of cosmic discovery.
The Department of Astronomy is a leading center of astrophysics and planetary science research.
Visit CCAPS, the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science
The Astronomy Major at Cornell University is designed to be flexible so that it can be customized to the needs of each student.
Learn about the undergraduate program
Astronomy offers a wide variety of world-class research opportunities in astronomy, astrophysics and space science, with strong multidisciplinary connections, and a friendly and supportive atmosphere.
In the spirit of the renowned Cornell Professor Carl Sagan, the Department of Astronomy reaches beyond campus in numerous ways. The Spacecraft Planetary Image Facility (SPIF) is a repository of spacecraft data, a facilitator of research, and a hub for PreK-12 education and public outreach activities. Ask an Astronomer has been answering questions from the curious since 1997. The Cornell Astronomical Society conducts viewing nights at the Fuertes Observatory and offers educational programing to the public.