News and Events
The University of Massachusetts Amherst Sunwheel and Sky-Watching events mark the spring equinox on March 20, 2015.
Professor Daniela Calzetti was recently elected a member of the AAS Council. Her three year term begins in August 2015.
The Office of Research Development in collaboration with Corporate and Foundation Relations is pleased to announce the following nominees for the Limited Submission 2015 David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowships for Science and Engineering:
Yuriy Burn, Computer Science: Self-Adaptive Software that Discovers and Corrects Bugs
and
Stella Offer, Astronomy: A New Paradigm for the Origin of Stars and Stellar Multiplicity
We are very pleased and excited to announce that Dr. Kate Whitaker has been offered the prestigious NASA’s Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship, the world’s top fellowship program in astronomy according to many, which she will carry out at the Department of Astronomy here at UMass Amherst starting this coming summer. A UMass alumna, Kate received her Bachelors of Science in Physics and Astronomy in 2005. She graduated summa cum laude with one of the first cohorts through the Commonwealth College. During her time at UMass, she was also awarded the Hasbrouck Scholarship, William F. Field Alumni Scholarship, Outstanding Undergraduate Award in the Astronomy Department, and the Mary Dailey Irvine Prize. Following her successful start at UMass, Kate went on to receive her PhD in 2012 through the Department of Astronomy at Yale University. Kate is currently a James Webb Space Telescope Postdoctoral Program Fellow at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She is excited to return to UMass Amherst to pursue her research interests in understanding the growth of galaxies across cosmic time.
Professor Peter Schloerb and colleagues are among the first research findings to be published from the European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkoas published in Science
In a first, astronomers catch a multiple star system in the process of forming.
Professor Emeritus William Irvine of the Astronomy Department is the Co-Chief Editor of the soon to appear Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, being produced by the publisher Springer. The science of astrobiology is concerned with the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe. It is an extremely interdisciplinary field, combining aspects of physics, astronomy, chemistry, geoscience, biology, microbiology, planetary science, and the history of science. The new, 2nd edition, of the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology contains some 2000 entries by more than 400 authors from institutions around the world, the articles ranging from short entries of 200-500 words to overviews of more than 6000 words. The Encyclopedia will be produced in both 4 volumes of printed text and in an on-line version. Professor Irvine has been selected to be on the editorial board of the Japanese journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science.
From NBC News -- Rosetta's Comet Revealed: It's Dry on the Outside, Fluffy on the Inside.
Astronomer Peter Schoerb, part of an international team, takes a close-up look at a comet.
James Lowenthal, Professor of Astronomy at Smith College, has shared a link to some photos and videos from the from his 7-night run at the facility in December 2014.