Astronomy

The third annual Honors Banquet commemorated excellence in academics, leadership and innovation among Graduate School students and faculty. On March 20, the banquet was held to honor and reflect on remarkable achievements in research and creative expression from the more than 50 graduate programs and departments represented in the Graduate School. Read More

Larry Bartels and Keivan Stassun were among the 23 recipients of 2024 National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation—the nation’s highest honors for exemplary achievement and leadership in science and technology. Both received their medals from President Joe Biden during a White House ceremony on Jan. 3. Read More

Larry Bartels and Keivan Stassun were among the 23 recipients of the 2024 National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation—the nation’s highest honors for exemplary achievement and leadership in science and technology. Both... Read More

Stassun, who is also a founding co-director the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program, was among the 2024 MacArthur fellows announced on Tuesday, Oct. 1. The fellowship, which is awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, aims to identify extraordinarily creative individuals with a track record of excellence in a field of scholarship or area of practice. Recipients also demonstrate the ability to affect society in significant and beneficial ways through their pioneering work or the rigor of their contributions, according to the foundation. Read More

Vanderbilt professor Alex Lupsasca plans to extend Earth's largest telescope network beyond the atmosphere with a space-based dish. It could spot part of a black hole we've never seen before – and perhaps discover new physics. Read More

Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory welcomes astronomy enthusiasts to its 2024 season, marked this year by the unveiling of a new logo. Read More

Vanderbilt graduate student Shaniya Jarrett created a community outreach project that introduces Black girls to astronomy by incorporating music. AstroBeats: Sounds of the Cosmos brings together local middle-school Black girls to translate NASA data into unique musical compositions, teaching the importance of thinking creatively about how to interpret scientific data. Read More

Vanderbilt hosts first international lunar gravitational wave workshop, including a Nobel laureate, a NASA administrator, leading astrophysicists and more, to identify opportunities and resources to continue exploring our universe.  Read More

Aging stars expand and eventually destroy planets in their inner systems. Or do they? A team of researchers that includes Keivan Stassun finds evidence of a planet that survived its star’s transformation, and that is reshaping our understanding of planetary and stellar evolution. Read More

New research led by Vanderbilt astrophysicist Karan Jani presents a compelling roadmap for capturing intermediate-mass black hole activity. Read More

A groundbreaking study, using data from NASA and a technique pioneered by a Vanderbilt professor, is giving humankind a glimpse at a distant exoplanet with a size similar to Earth and a surface which may resemble Mercury or Earth’s Moon. Located nearly 49 light-years from Earth, the planet known… Read More

Before we go further and send humans to Mars, we need to know if doing so could trigger the extinction of existing life on the planet, writes Professor of Astronomy David Weintraub. Read More

The newly discovered planets appear to have too much water to sustain life but provide hints at what sorts of planets might do so. Read More

Astronomers have come up with a new and improved method for measuring the masses of millions of solitary stars, especially those with planetary systems. Read More

Filling the universe with knots shortly after it popped into existence 13.8 billion years ago provides a neat explanation for why we inhabit a three-dimensional world. That is the basic idea advanced by an out-of-the-box theory developed by an international team of physicists. Read More

A high-altitude weather balloon rose yesterday from a Vanderbilt garage rooftop to the edge of space to live-stream the eclipse from above Nashville and record the temporary atmospheric changes it caused. Read More

Astronomers at Vanderbilt and Ohio State have discovered a planet like Jupiter zipping around its host star every day, boiling at temperatures hotter than most stars with a giant cometary tail. Read More

Astronomers from Vanderbilt, Lehigh and Ohio State universities have discovered a “puffy planet" with the density of Styrofoam that is an excellent test-bed for probing exoplanets for signs of life. Read More

During this talk, Dr. Keivan Stassun summarizes the promise of the TESS mission for detecting other worlds like our own and identifying other places in the universe where life just might be possible. This talk took place at Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory on March 3rd, 2017. Read More

Astronomers participating in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have announced the results of the first study that shows how the abundance of the "elements of life" varies across the Milky Way galaxy. Read More