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Astronomy News

Student Spotlight: Derek Berman

11/28/2023

Derek Berman, doctoral student in geological sciences, studies the geophysical environment of Mars’ Jezero crater.

Artist's representation of AT2022tsd. — Artist’s representation of AT2022tsd, an explosion in a distant galaxy. The image shows one possible explanation: a black hole accreting matter from a disk and powering a jet. Variation in the jet's direction could produce the observed rapid flashes. Robert L. Hurt/Caltech/IPAC

With unprecedented flares, stellar corpse shows signs of life

11/15/2023

After a distant star’s explosive death, an active stellar corpse was the likely source of repeated energetic flares observed over several months – a phenomenon astronomers had never seen before, a Cornell-led team reports in new research published Nov. 15 in Nature.

Jurassic worlds might be easier to spot than modern Earth

11/02/2023

Telescopes could better detect potential chemical signatures of life in the atmosphere of an Earth-like exoplanet more closely resembling the age the dinosaurs inhabited than the one we know today, Cornell astronomers find.

Underwater robot updates understanding of ice shelf crevasses

10/27/2023

Crevasses play an important role in circulating seawater beneath Antarctic ice shelves, potentially influencing their stability, finds Cornell-led research based on first-of-its-kind exploration by an underwater robot.

Earth as seen from Galileo probe — Earth as seen by the Galileo probe in 1990. NASA/JPL

How would we know whether there is life on Earth? This bold experiment found out

10/16/2023

Thirty years ago, astronomer Carl Sagan convinced NASA to turn a passing space probe’s instruments on Earth to look for life — with results that still reverberate today.

Nature’s missing evolutionary law identified

10/16/2023

An interdisciplinary group of researchers has identified a missing aspect of Darwin's theory that applies to essentially everything.

Webb detects quartz crystals in clouds of hot gas giant

10/16/2023

The quartz crystals are only about 10 nanometers across (one-millionth of one centimeter), so small that 10,000 could fit side-by-side across a human hair.

Cornell-built instrument to transform Green Bank Telescope

10/09/2023

The new camera "is actually a very different way of observing the sky,” said A&S research scientist Amit Vishwas ’10, M.Eng.,’14, Ph.D. ’19.

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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.

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Research spotlight

After a distant star’s explosive death, an active stellar corpse was the likely source of repeated energetic flares observed over several months – a phenomenon astronomers had never seen before. Anna Y.Q. Ho, assistant professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, is first author in new research published Nov. 15 in Nature.

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Reaching beyond campus

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.