Tag: space & astronomy

Slideshow: Pieces of UW-Madison astronomy history off to the nation’s attic

Posted on February 12, 2015

While cleaning out Sterling Hall cabinets that hadn’t been opened in decades, UW-Madison Space Place Director Jim Lattis and colleagues in the Astronomy Department struck historical gold: a collection of old photodiode and photomultiplier tubes dating to the earliest days of photoelectric astronomy. The university is donating 20 of the vintage photo detectors to the Smithsonian Institution for its permanent collection of astronomical instruments.

Letting off steam: Gas discharge terminates galaxy’s star formation

Posted on December 3, 2014

With the help of a radio telescope in the French Alps, an international team of astronomers, including two from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has observed a never-before-seen stage of galactic evolution. Writing in this week’s Nature, a group that includes UW-Madison astronomers Aleks Diamond-Stanic and Christy Tremonti, reports measurements of dense, cold hydrogen gas being blasted from a distant star-forming galaxy, the first direct observation of the “blow out” phase of a galaxy’s evolution.

Telescopes hint at neutrino beacon at the heart of the Milky Way

Posted on November 26, 2014

Thanks to a confluence of data from a suite of vastly different telescopes, there are tantalizing clues that the massive black hole at the core of the Milky Way may be a cosmic accelerator. In a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review D, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison physicist Yang Bai reports a correlation of IceCube data with a recorded burst of X-rays from Sagittarius A, an object at the center of our galaxy that is believed to be a supermassive black hole.

Satellite history at UW-Madison comes full circle with award

Posted on November 21, 2014

Michael Pavolonis thinks of himself as a volcano guy.

UW team’s plants return to Earth after growing in space

Posted on November 6, 2014

Researchers at Simon Gilroy’s lab in the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison expect to greet a truck this afternoon that is carrying small containers holding more than 1,000 frozen plants that germinated and grew aboard the International Space Station.

They know the drill: UW leads the league in boring through ice sheets

Posted on October 30, 2014

Hollow coring drills designed and managed by UW-Madison’s Ice Drilling Design and Operations (IDDO) program are used to extract ice cores that can analyze the past atmosphere. Shaun Marcott, an assistant professor of geoscience at UW-Madison, was the first author of a paper published today in the journal Nature documenting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 23,000 and 9,000 years ago, based on data from an 11,000-foot hole in Antarctica.

UW-Madison becomes newest Intel Parallel Computing Center

Posted on June 24, 2014

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been selected to join the Intel Parallel Computing Centers program.

Beginning of time to unfold at UW-Madison Space Place

Posted on May 27, 2014

Eavesdrop on the beginning of time this Friday evening (May 30, 2014) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Space Place, 2300 S. Park St.

Video: Uncommon unrainbow brings dash of color to sky

Posted on May 15, 2014

It’s a rainbow. It’s a sun dog. No, it’s a fire rainbow, which isn’t actually a rainbow at all.

New Milky Way portrait to be on Town Center media wall

Posted on March 20, 2014

The dramatic new infrared picture of the plane of our galaxy will be viewable for the next week on the large media wall in the Town Center of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on the UW-Madison campus.

Dramatic new portrait helps define Milky Way’s shape, contents

Posted on March 20, 2014

Using more than 2 million images collected by NASA’s orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, a team of Wisconsin scientists has stitched together a dramatic 360-degree portrait of the Milky Way, providing new details of our galaxy’s structure and contents.

Nathan Whitehorn a 2014 ‘Young Star’ in astrophysics

Posted on February 21, 2014

Nathan Whitehorn, a postdoctoral researcher on the IceCube project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been named a “Young Star” by the Division of Astrophysics of the American Physical Society (APS).

Fledgling supernova remnant reveals neutron star’s secrets

Posted on December 4, 2013

With the help of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Australia Telescope Compact Array, an international team of astronomers has identified the glowing wreck of a star that exploded a mere 2,500 years ago — the blink of an eye in astronomical terms.

IceCube pushes neutrinos to the forefront of astronomy

Posted on November 21, 2013

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a particle detector buried in the Antarctic ice, is a demonstration of the power of the human passion for discovery, where scientific ingenuity meets technological innovation.

IceCube feature film to premiere in Milwaukee planetarium show

Posted on October 31, 2013

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is one of a kind. Built deep within the Antarctic ice, it is the world’s largest neutrino detector. Now, thanks to a collaboration between the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) and the Milwaukee Public Museum, it boasts another unique aspect: its own planetarium show.

Astronaut scholarship honors undergrad’s adventures in research

Posted on October 23, 2013

Even in the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering, where undergraduates are encouraged to seek hands-on experience, it’s rare that a faculty member finds himself taken aback by a freshman’s eagerness to get involved in research.

The sun also flips: 11-year solar cycle wimpy, but peaking

Posted on October 16, 2013

In a 3-meter diameter hollow aluminum sphere, Cary Forest, a University of Wisconsin-Madison physics professor, is stirring and heating plasmas to 500,000 degrees Fahrenheit to experimentally mimic the magnetic field-inducing cosmic dynamos at the heart of planets, stars and other celestial bodies.

Exhibiting signs of life

Posted on September 26, 2013

What if you could travel back in time 3 billion years, and take a breath? What would earth’s air smell like? Deeply stinky, according to Brooke Norsted, an outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum.

Observations reveal critical interplay of interstellar dust, hydrogen

Posted on September 25, 2013

For astrophysicists, the interplay of hydrogen – the most common molecule in the universe – and the vast clouds of dust that fill the voids of interstellar space has been an intractable puzzle of stellar evolution.

UW brings outreach to Epic’s ‘Deep Space’

Posted on September 19, 2013

Hosting a series of exhibits on Epic Systems campus in Verona for the health care software company’s massive annual users’ group meeting, UW-Madison researchers and outreach experts focused on “Deep Space,” the name of Epic’s new underground auditorium, as a common theme to demonstrate how campus research is making an impact in and out of this world.