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Bright Stars to Black Holes: UA Astronomer Awarded for Her Research

In addition to being selected as one of 50 scholars awarded fellowships each year at the prestigious Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the UA’s Feryal Ozel has won the 2013 American Physical Society’s Maria Goeppert Mayer Award for her cutting-edge research on neutron stars.

Feryal Ozel studies two things most people don’t think about everyday: neutron stars and black holes.

An associate professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Ozel has won the 2013 American Physical Society’s Maria Goeppert Mayer Award for her work on neutron stars and her dedication to public outreach and education in science and astronomy. In addition, this year she is completing a prestigious fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. Ozel came to the UA in 2003 as a NASA Hubble fellow and began a faculty position in 2005. (more…)

NASA Discovers First Earth-Size Planets Beyond Our Solar System

By Guest PostDecember 20, 2011Scienceastrophysical phenomena, blender, computer program, constellation lyra, cygnus, earth size planets, exoplanets, francois fressin, g type, Galaxy, habitable zone, harvard smithsonian center, jack lissauer, kepler 20e, kepler 20f, kepler mission, kepler science team, kepler space telescope, light years, liquid water, NASA, natalie batalha, neptune, planet mercury, planet system, planets like earth, san jose state university, solar system, spitzer space telescope, sun, venus

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.

The discovery marks the next important milestone in the ultimate search for planets like Earth. The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth. Kepler-20f is slightly larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets reside in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. (more…)

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Bright Stars to Black Holes: UA Astronomer Awarded for Her Research

NASA Discovers First Earth-Size Planets Beyond Our Solar System