Hannah Jang-Condell, our alum who received her Ph.D. in 2004, has been given tenure at the University of Wyoming.  She is an Associate Professor in their Physics and Astronomy Department. She studies planet formation theory, protoplanetary disk models, extrasolar planets, computational astrophysics, astrobiology.  Congratulations, Hannah!

Press coverage of a new paper in Scientific American: A new study sheds light on how damaging black holes can be to the habitability of planets throughout the Milky Way and the universe.

Link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ravenous-supermassive-black-h...

Astrobites: https://astrobites.org/2017/05/30/blown-away-by- Read more about Ravenous Supermassive Black Holes May Sterilize Nearby Planets

In case you haven't already heard the news about Ryan Hickox - a former Harvard grad student - now tenured professor at Dartmouth!  Ryan also is one of the first "house professors" in the house system that Dartmouth is expanding:  

https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2015/05/house-professors-named-residential-communities

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ Read more about Congratulations to Professor Ryan Hickox

Astronomy Undergraduates in Ay100 Observational Astronomy course over spring break went on a trip. They traveled to the Desert Museum, University of Arizona mirror lab to see telescope mirrors being made, and to Whipple observatory to observe on the 1.2-m and 1.5-m telescope collecting data for their class project.

Read more about Undergraduate Visit Whipple Observatory over Spring Break

Dear Colleagues,

I am very sorry to report that our colleague Pat Thaddeus passed away this morning. 

Pat was a highly influential teacher and astronomer for over 50 years, including the past 30 at the CfA. His interests were extremely broad, including pioneering work on the cosmic microwave background radiation, planetary atmospheres, and large-scale studies of star formation and galactic structure. He was one of the founders of the now flourishing field of astrochemistry.  His elegant laboratory spectroscopy provided ironclad identifications of many new molecules Read more about Pat Thaddeus

Listen to Hannah Devlin interview with Avi Loeb. 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2017/apr/20/breakthrough-stars...

Read an interview with Dava Sobel about her book the Glass Universe about the Harvard College Observatory. 

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/star-analysts-of-harvard-c...(1)