Tag Archives: radio telescopes

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…)

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Seeing Stars, Finding Nukes: Radio Telescopes Can Spot Clandestine Nuclear Tests

SAN FRANCISCO — In the search for rogue nukes, researchers have discovered an unlikely tool: astronomical radio telescopes.

Ohio State University researchers previously demonstrated another unlikely tool, when they showed that South Korean GPS stations detected telltale atmospheric disturbances from North Korea’s 2009 nuclear test.

Both techniques were born out of the discovery that underground nuclear explosions leave their mark—on the outer reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. (more…)

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Scientists Prepare to Take First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole

*The Event Horizon Telescope is an Earth-sized virtual telescope powerful enough to see all the way to the center of our Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole will allow astrophysicists to put Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to the test.*

Astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields across the world will convene in Tucson, Ariz. on Jan. 18 to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous.

The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, and Dan Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory. (more…)

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Clocking Neptune’s Spin

*By tracking atmospheric features on Neptune, a UA planetary scientist has accurately determined the planet’s rotation, a feat that had not been previously achieved for any of the gas planets in our solar system except Jupiter.

A day on Neptune lasts precisely 15 hours, 57 minutes and 59 seconds, according to the first accurate measurement of its rotational period made by University of Arizona planetary scientist Erich Karkoschka.

His result is one of the largest improvements in determining the rotational period of a gas planet in almost 350 years since Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini made the first observations of Jupiter’s Red Spot. (more…)

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