Prof. Edo Berger has been named one of the winners of the third annual Star Family Challenge for Promising Scientific Research, a faculty research award program established at the suggestion of James A. Star ’83. The Star Family Challenge provides seed funding for high-risk, high-impact projects in the natural and social sciences.

Astronomer explains plan to send tiny spaceships to Alpha Centauri

"A group of astronomers and technology entrepreneurs has announced an audacious plan to send a fleet of tiny spaceships traveling at a fifth the speed of light to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. 

"The plan would see humankind leap out of the solar system with the aid of an ultralight vessel made of what are essentially cellphone components and a thin, reflective light sail propelled by an enormous array of Earth-based lasers. 

Read full interview with Avi Loeb. 

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This year's Astronomy 100 ("Observational Methods") Spring Break trip to Whipple Observatory in Arizona included 13 students, accompanied by Prof. Edo Berger, Teaching Fellow Peter Blanchard, and Astro Lab manager Allyson Bieryla.... Read more about Astronomy 100 Undergraduate Students Observe at Whipple Observatory and Classify Supernovae

Abraham “Avi” Loeb, Chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy and C. Meghan Urry, Director of Yale University’s Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, take us on a tour of these remarkable discoveries.

92Y Website

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Call it a gut reaction. The revolutionary discovery of space-time ripples may have come from two black holes colliding while inside the belly of an enormous star, whose subsequent collapse launched powerful jets of gamma rays.

Scientists already knew that the gravitational waves detected by LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, were generated when two black holes...

Graduate student Catherine Zucker’s research was featured on the American Astronomical Society’s “Nova” (News) site! Cara Battersby, SMA postdoc collaborator & Catherine’s REU mentor is the other co-author.

http://aasnova.org/2015/12/07/companions-for-nessie-in-the-milky-ways-skeleton/

"Archaeologists and astronomers don’t seem to have much in common. One digs into the earth while the other looks at the sky, and a stone tool once wielded by Homo erectus couldn’t be more different from an exploding star at the edge of the visible universe...

Read More: http://discovermagazine.com/2015/dec/13-the-archaeology-of-stars

"Our Sun is a relatively quiet star that only occasionally releases solar flares or blasts of energetic particles that threaten satellites and power grids. You might think that smaller, cooler stars would be even more sedate. However, astronomers have now identified a tiny star with a monstrous temper. It shows evidence of much stronger flares than anything our Sun produces. If similar stars prove to be just as stormy, then potentially habitable planets orbiting them are likely to be much less hospitable than previously thought"

See more at:...

Below is the video link just posted for Avi Loeb's lecture on "Black Holes" at the 100 Years Celebration of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, held at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton on November 6, 2015,

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Dear Astronomy department colleagues,

With the goal of inspiring young kids to enter science, the Science Education Center of the Smithsonian Institution produced the following video about Avi Loeb's unconventional career path from a farm in Israel to Harvard,

The video was produced by Josh Bernstein (CEO of Explorer at Large)