Working under harsh Antarctic conditions, an international team of scientists, engineers and technicians has set in place the first critical elements of a massive neutrino telescope at the South Pole.
In the spring of 2005, when the new Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) trains its huge eye on the southern sky for the first time, the starlight it gathers will be parsed and analyzed by an instrument more befitting a space-based telescope than a ground-based monster.
Some of the first data from a new orbiting infrared telescope are revealing that the Milky Way – and by analogy galaxies in general – is making new stars at a much more prolific pace than astronomers imagined.
The mysteries of planet hunting, black holes and other cosmic phenomena will be the subject of a special public lecture by UW-Madison alumna and NASA scientist Anne Kinney on Friday, May 7.
The public is invited to a free reading of “Comet Hunter,” a new play about the life and career of a female astronomer who helped shape the modern history of her field. The event begins at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 3, on the UW-Madison campus.
The “founding father” of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Frank Drake, will give a free public lecture at UW-Madison at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 19 in 1315 Chemistry Building, 1101 University Ave.
The neutrino telescope IceCube is making its first tracks in the South Pole’s snow, reports Jeff Cherwinka, an engineer with the Antarctic Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Institute at UW-Madison.
Amy Barger, a UW-Madison professor of astronomy, is one of 16 young academics named a 2003 Packard Foundation Fellow for Science and Engineering, it was announced today (Oct. 15).
Astronomy professor Linda Sparke has been elected to the fellowship program at the American Physical Society, a worldwide federation of more than 42,000 physicists.
Sure, graduate students live in all sorts of places all over town, but probably only one lives underneath a big telescope. As part of his job through the Astronomy Department, Aaron Steffen gets to live an observational astronomer’s dream: to spend each night beneath the giant dome of a working observatory.
A direct descendant of the apple tree that bore the falling fruit that inspired the notion of gravitation by Sir Isaac Newton is being donated to UW-Madison by U.S. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner.
A novel telescope, buried deep in the Antarctic ice at the South Pole, has become the first instrument to detect and track high-energy neutrinos from space, setting the stage for a new field of astronomy that promises a view of some of the most distant, enigmatic and violent phenomena in the universe.
Working through the WIYN consortium, astronomers from UW-Madison and three other UW System schools – UW-Oshkosh, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Whitewater – have entered into an agreement with the National Optical Astronomical Observatories to acquire and operate a 0.9-meter telescope atop Kitt Peak, Ariz.
The university has joined forces with an international consortium to help build and operate a major new South African observatory.
Photo feature.
From Oct. 11-16, Madison will be the focal point of the solar system for the community of scientists who study the planets and the menagerie of solar system objects as the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Science meets here.