The American Astronomical Society has selected Professor Charlie Conroy to receive the Helen. B. Warner Prize for 2017.  The prize includes a cash award and an invitation to give a plenary talk, hopefully at the upcoming summer AAS meeting in Austin, Texas.  AAS Press Release 

The Helen B. Warner Prize is given annually for a significant contribution to observational...

Watch White House Fellow and Harvard Astronomy Graduate Student Anjali Tripathi's featured TED talk entitled "Why Earth May Someday Look like Mars"

http://www.ted.com/talks/anjali_tripathi_why_earth_may_someday_look_like_mars

Congratulations to Munazza Alam, Harvard graduate student in astronomy & astrophysics, for being selected as a National Geographic Young Explorer! Learn more about this extraordinary researcher in her online interview.

Read More: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/munazza-alam-explorer-moments-dwarf-stars/

Harvard undergraduate Charles Law '17 has been selected for the prestigious Universities Space Research Association (USRA) Scholarship Award.

The President and CEO of USRA, Jeffrey Isaacson, presented Law with the Frederick Tarantino Memorial Scholarship Award at a ceremony held November 2 during the USRA annual meeting located at Harvard this year. Also present at the ceremony was Dan Milisavljevic (SAO Postdoctoral Fellow who supervised Law as a PRISE fellow), Edo Berger (Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies), and Jonathan Grindlay (Professor and USRA representative)....

"A vibrant scientific culture encourages many interpretations of evidence, argues Avi Loeb.

Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/good-data-are-not-enough-1.20906

The Harvard Astronomy department endorses the Code of Ethics of the American Astronomical Society and abides by its guiding principles.

The Harvard Gazette features Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin who was promoted as the first woman to receive a full-time, non-female-only professorship from Harvard College. 

Link:  Written in the Stars 

Harvard Undergraduate Astronomy Alumni Dr. Nancy A. Levenson (1989) appointed Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Read More: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/36

Harvard graduate student and astrophysicist Anjali Tripathi has been named a White House Fellow for 2016-17. She is one of 16 Fellows selected from more than 1,000 applicants.  Tripathi's biography and additional information are in the White House announcement.   CFA press release: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/fe201620

Other press coverage:...

• arXive Paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.07345v1.pdf
• Gizmodo: "Astronomer Avi Loeb Is Here to Talk to You About Exoplanets"
  
• NY Times: “...

Harvard Astronomy Graduate Student Yuan-Sen Ting has been selected for the Dr. Pliny A. and Margaret H. Price Prize in Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics. 

... Read more about Yuan-Sen Ting awarded Dr. Pliny A. and Margaret H. Price Prize in Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics

CFA Press Release: "The universe is 13.8 billion years old, while our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists think this time gap means that life on other planets could be billions of years older than ours. However, new theoretical work suggests that present-day life is actually premature from a cosmic perspective."

... Read more about Is Earthly Life Premature from a Cosmic Perspective?

"Astronomers Aaron Smith and Volker Bromm of The University of Texas at Austin, working with Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have discovered evidence for an unusual kind of black hole born extremely early in the universe. They showed that a recently discovered unusual source of intense radiation is likely powered by a "direct-collapse black hole," a type of object predicted by theorists more than a decade ago."

Full CfA Press Release: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2016-15

Image: An...

Adam Riess, Nobel Laureate and ’96 alumnus of the Harvard Astronomy Department, has just been named a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins. Supported by a $350M gift from Michael Bloomberg, the BDPs will form a cohort of 50 world-class, interdisciplinary scholars at Johns Hopkins. Adam is the 7^th internally selected faculty member to be chosen for this honor.

Johns Hopkins Link: ...

View a television interview with Avi Loeb on the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, a project to visit the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, that some of our students and postdocs are involved in.

http://www.newtv.org/video/innovation-showcase/Breakthrough-Starshot-Initiative/