This groundbreaking model of the universe called Illustris was created by a team of post-doc researchers headed up by Faculty member, Lars Hernquist, and graduate student, Dylan Nelson.  This work was first described in a recent Nature article.... Read more about Astronomers Create First Realistic Virtual Universe

Alexander Krolewski, has been awarded a Hoopes Prize for the project entitled "Measuring the luminosity and black hole mass dependence of quasar-galaxy clustering at z ~ 0.8."
Natania Wolansky, has been awarded a Hoopes Prize for the project entitled "Are You There Gas?  It's Me, Planet: The Effects of Gas on Growth of Gas Giant Cores through Planetesimal Accretion."... Read more about 2014 Hoopes Prize and Goldberg Prize Awarded to Astrononomy Undergraduates

The Big Brain Explaining the Growing Universe
"Some 14 billion years ago, a violent burst of antigravity drove space to expand at a blistering rate that momentarily exceeded the speed of light..."
Read More: http://time.com/70868/john-kovac-2014-time-100/

"Eighty percent of the universe is utterly invisible, but an exotic dance of mutually annihilating particles may explain it all"

Read More:

• Time Magazine: The Mystery of Dark Matter: WIMPS May Have the Answer
• CfA Press Release: ...

Detection and characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres, with emphasis on developing new observational techniques to study the atmospheres of the Earth-like planets to be discovered by the NASA TESS mission.

... Read more about Mercedes Lopez-Morales: Exoplanet Observations

Celebrating the Impact of New Ideas and New Discoveries
Sarah Rugheimer, Harvard Astronomy Graduate Student, was one of the eight selected Harvard Scholars who joined President Faust, Provost Alan Garber, FAS Dean Mike Smith, and GSAS Dean Xiao-Li Meng as the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences celebrated the power of new ideas — and the talent and innovation of the scholars who are generating them.

... Read more about The Harvard Horizons Symposium: April 22, 2014

"Four billion years from now, our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with our large spiraled neighbor, Andromeda.

The galaxies as we know them will not survive.

In fact, our solar system is going to outlive our galaxy. At that point, the sun will not yet be a red giant star – but it will have grown bright enough to roast Earth’s surface. Any life forms still there, though, will be treated to some pretty spectacular cosmic choreography."

National Geographic: ...

"The landscape in Chile’s Atacama desert is Martian-like: dry, barren and flanked by volcanoes, and its high altitude and unpolluted skies make it a prime spot for stargazing. It was there, after a full night of such observation — and over a 4 p.m. breakfast — that astronomer Stefan Gillessen found himself in possession of some very special data. His observations showed a cloud of gas being stretched out, or “spaghettified,” about to be ripped apart, as it barreled toward the black hole at the center of our galaxy...

For information on BICEP2 2014 Results. Go to:

http://bicepkeck.org/

CFA Press Release: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-05

Selected Press:

• NY Times:...

Harvard Astronomy Undergraduate Alumni Neil deGrasse Tyson is picking up where Carl Sagan left off in a new series called "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey."

Links:

NY Times: A Successor to Sagan Reboots ‘Cosmos’

Watch an online webcast of an Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory Night event tonight (Thursday, February 20, 2014) at 7:30PM celebrating "50 Years After the Discovery of the Big Bang", featuring four 20 minute presentations by Alan Guth, Bob Wilson, Bob Kirshner, and Avi Loeb.

Second link for broadcast:...

Karin Oberg won the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship for 2014. Also among the recipients are the former students of our department, Ryan Hickox and Phil Hopkins, and the former ITC postdoc, Dan Fabrycky.

"The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise.  These two-year fellowships are awarded yearly to 126 researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field."

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