News

A University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team looked more than 13 billion years into the past to discover a unique, minuscule galaxy that could help astronomers learn more about galaxies that were present shortly after the Big Bang.
Research

Researchers discover tiny galaxy with big star power using James Webb telescope

Posted

Galaxy is the smallest ever discovered at this distance—around 500 million years after the Big Bang

This observation from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope contains three different images of the same supernova-hosting galaxy
Research

MIfA Researchers are Early JWST Users

Posted

MIfA Faculty, Postdoctoral Researchers, and Graduate Students have been busy analyzing JWST observations.

Image of X-ray observation of the sun
Research

Student-planned NuSTAR observation reveals hidden light shows on the Sun

Posted

Students at the School played a key role in planning a NuSTAR solar observation which could help shed light on one of the Sun’s biggest mysteries. UMN physics grad students Marianne Peterson and Reed Masek, as well as recent physics Ph.D. recipient Jessie Duncan, under the guidance of Associate Professor Lindsay Glesener, of the School of Physics and Astronomy, all worked on a successful proposal to NASA to use the NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array)--typically used to view bodies outside the solar system such as massive black holes and collapsed stars-- to observe the Sun. The group is also actively analyzing the data obtained from the observations.

Patrick Kelly
Awards

Kelly Receives Borja Award

Posted

Assistant Professor Patrick Kelly of the School of Physics and Astronomy has received the Guillermo E. Borja Award from the College of Science and Engineering.

Radio image in purple of SAURON, a mysterious ring of emission almost a million light years across.  At its center is a giant elliptical galaxy, seen here in a picture from the Dark Energy Survey, at a distance of a billion light years from Earth.
Research

Computer Picks a Mysterious Radio Object

Posted

A team co-led by MIfA Professor Emeritus Lawrence Rudnick tapped a computer algorithm to search for unusual objects in the radio sky. One of its choices is this mysterious object, given the moniker SAURON, likely the result of a massive explosion in a distant galaxy, and, tantalizingly, perhaps the merger of a pair of super-massive black holes.

Light from supernova
Research

Kelly leads study of Red-supergiant supernova images

Posted

Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics Professor Patrick Kelly led a team that has measured the size of a star dating back more than 11 billion years ago using images that show the evolution of the star exploding and cooling. The research could help scientists learn more about the early Universe.

TURBO telescope
Awards

Kelly receives $1 million grant to build superfast ‘TURBO’ telescopes

Posted

A team led by Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics Assistant Professor, Patrick Kelly, is constructing two sets of telescopes that will open a new window into the collisions of neutron stars and black holes.

Ali Sulaiman
Research

Ringleader: New Faculty Member is Expert in Planetary Physics

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This fall, the School of Physics and Astronomy will welcome Ali Sulaiman to the space physics group.

Above is an illustration of an intermediate polar system, a type of two-star system that the research team thinks V1674 Hercules belongs to. A flow of gas from the large companion star impacts an accretion disk before flowing along magnetic field lines onto the white dwarf
Research

Woodward research takes a look at the fastest nova on record

Posted

A research report, co-authored by Professor Charles Woodward of the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics describes the unusual quirks of V1674 Hercules, the fastest nova ever on record.

Ramanakumar Sankar
Research

School leads citizen science effort to study Jupiter's atmosphere

Posted

Ramanakumar Sankar, a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Physics and Astronomy is leading the latest Zooniverse project, Jovian Vortex Hunter.