2012

Capturing the stars with video and sound, CFA fellow turns astronomical data into art

September 11, 2012


Image Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Alex Parker, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ Institute for Theory and Computation, has created several astronomical videos on his own time and posted them on the Internet. His latest video depicts the 2,299 planet candidates Kepler has found since it began searching for planets around stars in 2009.

Harvard Gazette Article

Supernova Sonata” video

Worlds: The Kepler Planet Candidates” video

Planets Can Form in the Galactic Center

September 11, 2012


In this artist's conception, a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust (red) is being shredded by the powerful gravitational tides of our galaxy's central black hole.
Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

At first glance, the center of the Milky Way seems like a very inhospitable place to try to form a planet. Stars crowd each other as they whiz through space like cars on a rush-hour freeway. Supernova explosions blast out shock waves and bathe the region in intense radiation. Powerful gravitational forces from a super-massive black hole twist and warp the fabric of space itself. 

Avi Loeb appointed the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science

September 10, 2012
Harvard Astronomy Professor Avi Loeb has been appointed the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, effective July 1, 2012.  This professorship, established through the generous gift of the Frank B. Baird Jr. Foundation, recognizes an outstanding scientist in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Record-Breaking Stellar Explosion Helps Understand Far-Off Galaxy

September 4, 2012

An international research team, led by Edo Berger of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, made the most of a dying star’s fury to probe a distant galaxy some 9.5 billion light-years distant. The dying star, which lit the galactic scene, is the most distant stellar explosion of its kind ever studied. According to Berger, “It’s like someone turned on a flashlight in a dark room and suddenly allowed us to see, for a short time, what this far-off galaxy looks like, what it is composed of.”

CfA Press Release

Kaisey Mandel (Ph.D. 2011) wins Savage Prize

September 4, 2012

Kaisey Mandel (Ph.D. 2011), now a postdoc at Imperial College London, won the Savage Award of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis for the outstanding doctoral dissertation in applied methodology. His dissertation was "Improving cosmological distances to illuminate dark energy: hierarchical Bayesian models for type Ia supernovae in the optical and near-infrared." Kaisey received his award and gave a plenary talk at the ISBA World Meeting in Kyoto, Japan this summer.

http://bayesian.org/awards/Savage.html
http://bayesian.org/news/winners-isba-prizes-and-awards

Recreating a Slice of the Universe

August 21, 2012

Cambridge, MA - Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and their colleagues at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) have invented a new computational approach that can accurately follow the birth and evolution of thousands of galaxies over billions of years. For the first time it is now possible to build a universe from scratch that brims with galaxies like we observe around us.

View Video on Youtube

Read CFA Press Release

Phoenix Cluster Sets Record Pace at Forming Stars

August 21, 2012

Cambridge, MA - Astronomers have found an extraordinary galaxy cluster, one of the largest objects in the universe, that is breaking several important cosmic records. Observations of the Phoenix cluster with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the National Science Foundation's South Pole Telescope, and eight other world-class observatories may force astronomers to rethink how these colossal structures and the galaxies that inhabit them evolve.

Read CFA Press Release

... Read more about Phoenix Cluster Sets Record Pace at Forming Stars

A Trip to the Deep Future

August 21, 2012


Where will you be in 10100? Read an article by Kate Becker of PBS Nova that explores the deep future.

Read: A Trip to the Deep Future

Image Left: A computer simulation of the cosmic web of dark matter and ordinary matter. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Hallman (University of Colorado, Boulder)