News

Congratulations Class of 2013!

June 4, 2013

Congratuations to all our 2013 graduates in Astronomy.  Pictured above are the five graduates who attended the May 30th degree-awarding ceremony (from left to right):

  • Nick Stone (Tidal Disruption of Stars by Supermassive Black Holes)
  • Greg Snyder (Modeling Spatially and Spectrally Resolved Observations to Diagnose the Formation of Elliptical Galaxies)
  • Bob Penna (Black Hole Accretion Disks and Jets: Connecting Simulations and Theory)
  • Rebekah Dawson (On the Migratory Behavior of Planetary Systems)
  • Zach Berta (Super-Earth and Sub-Neptune Exoplanets: a First Look from the MEarth Project).

Dr. Stone will be taking up a post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia.  Dr. Snyder will be starting a post-doctoral fellowship in galaxy evolution at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD.  Dr. Penna, winner of the ITC’s 2013 Keto Prize, has accepted the Pappalardo Fellowship at MIT.  Dr. Dawson, who was the department’s 2013 Fireman Prize winner, has accepted a Miller Fellowship at UC Berkeley.  Dr. Berta was awarded the MIT Torres Fellowship for Research on Exoplanets. 

Exoplanet discovered with new technique that uses Einstein's relativity

May 14, 2013


Artist's conception of Kepler-76b,
orbiting its elongated star
David A. Aguilar (CfA)

A new method for detecting planet that Loeb & Gaudi proposed in 2003 was demonstrated to work and a new planet, Kepler 76b, was discovered with it.

Read More:

Wired UK: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/14/planet-discovery-method

CFA Press Release: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201312.html

Tel Aviv University: http://english.tau.ac.il/news/discovering_new_planet

Harvard Gazette: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/05/building-on-einstein/

Time Magazine: http://science.time.com/2013/06/04/albert-einstein-discovers-new-planet-really/

From Cosmic Dawn To Milkomeda, And Beyond

April 22, 2013

Science Magazine wrote a biographical article on Avi Loeb. From Cosmic Dawn To Milkomeda, And Beyond: The thoughts of Harvard theorist Avi Loeb traverse the universe, past and future—and he urges young researchers to be just as daring (pdf)

Stars align at astronomy reunion: Event draws researchers from around the world

April 11, 2013

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Stars align at astronomy reunion: Event draws researchers from around the world.

Left: Ruth Murray-Clay (from left), David Latham, Sara Seager, David Charbonneau, and moderator Charles Alcock were some of the faculty and alumni of the Astronomy Department that recently reunited for a luncheon, panel discussions, and evening reception.

Harvard Gazette Article

Harvard Astronomy's Supernova Forensics group has teamed up with Astronomy 100 undergraduate students to unveil the nature of the peculiar SN2012au

April 2, 2013

Harvard Astronomy's Supernova Forensics group has teamed up with Astronomy 100 undergraduate students to unveil the nature of the peculiar SN2012au - a massive star that exploded some 75 million years ago.  This energetic, slow-evolving and helium-rich explosion provides a golden link between the emerging class of "super-luminous" supernovae and other more seemingly normal supernovae that are far less bright.

Some observations of the supernova were obtained by two generations of Astro 100 students in 2012 and 2013 as part of the department's annual Spring Break trip to Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona. Students were the first to classify the new supernova in 2012 with the FLWO 1.5m telescope within just hours of its discovery by the Catalina Sky Survey.  A year later, the next group of students used the FLWO 1.2m telescope to show that SN2012au is still shining bright and thus evolving slowly.  A paper led by postdoc, Dan Milisavljevic, has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters with details on this unusual stellar explosion (link).

Article in Harvard Crimson

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