Tag Archives: mount lemmon

Rabies Research Designed for Prevention

UA undergraduate researcher Robert Clark, his public health mentor and Pima County officials collaborated on an investigation of rabies cases in Pima County.

In a volunteer opportunity turned research project, University of Arizona undergraduate researcher Robert Clark has developed a comprehensive, multi-year snapshot of animal cases of rabies in Pima County.

Clark began working with a mentor in the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and county officials to learn about the seasonality of rabies in animals and identify exactly where rabid animals were most often found. (more…)

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Rain Gods in a Desert Sea: New Book Celebrates Southern Arizona’s Mountains

A book by two UA scientists explains the story behind the scenery of the “sky islands,” the unique mountain ranges dotting southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico.

University of Arizona scientists Wendy Moore and Richard Brusca have published an illustrated book to celebrate and share the rich and unique natural history of southern Arizona’s mountains – the “sky islands” – with a general, non-scientific audience.  

Moore, assistant professor in the department of entomology in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and curator of the UA Insect Collection, said the book came about through field research she began two years ago when she founded the Arizona Sky Island Arthropod Project (ASAP). For her field research, Moore enlisted the help of Brusca, who is her husband as well as executive director emeritus of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and an adjunct research scientist in the UA’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology.   (more…)

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How Galaxies Grow Up

A study of 544 star-forming galaxies shows that disk galaxies like our own Milky Way reached their current state as orderly rotating pinwheels much later than previously thought, long after much of the universe’s star formation had ceased.

Galaxies are in no hurry to grow up, a team of astronomers has discovered. A comprehensive study of hundreds of galaxies observed by the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revealed an unexpected pattern of change that extends back 8 billion years, or more than half the age of the universe.

Researchers say the distant blue galaxies they studied are gradually transforming into rotating disk galaxies like our own Milky Way. Until now, it had not been clear how a galaxy’s organization and internal motion change over time, said Benjamin Weiner, assistant astronomer at the UA Steward Observatory and co-author of the paper describing the findings, which are published in The Astrophysical Journal. (more…)

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For UA Astronomy Students, the Sky is Not the Limit

UA astronomy students Kevin Hardegree-Ullman and Jake Turner designed, proposed, conducted and presented research on two recently discovered planets outside of our solar system while they were still undergraduates.

Deep in the cosmos, alien planets are circling distant stars, waiting to be pierced by the far-reaching gaze of Earth-bound telescopes. Some are Earth-like and have the potential to harbor liquid water and maybe even life. Others are enormous, gassy giants. All of them are different than any planet we know.

They are the exoplanets, planets outside of our solar system, which astronomers are only just beginning to discover and analyze.

Kevin Hardegree-Ullman and Jake Turner, then University of Arizona undergraduate astronomy students, decided to get to know two of them a little better. (more…)

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Asteroid 2011 AG5 – A Reality Check

Asteroid 2011 AG5 has been receiving a lot of attention lately because of a very unlikely scenario which would place it on an Earth-interception course 28 years from now. Here is a scientific reality check of this relatively nondescript space rock which is currently ranked a “1” on the 1 to 10 Torino Impact Hazard Scale

As of Feb. 26, 2012, asteroid 2011 AG5 is one of 8,744 near-Earth objects that have been discovered. It is approximately 460 feet (140 meters) in size and its orbit carries it as far out as beyond Mars’ orbit and as close to the sun as halfway between Earth and Venus. It was discovered on Jan. 8, 2011, by astronomers using a 60-inch Cassegrain reflector telescope located at the summit of Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Arizona. (more…)

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