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Some people look at the sunlight wandering across the bottom of a swimming pool and see only glare. Kiko Galvez, Charles A. Dana Professor of physics and astronomy, sees the fascinating effect of electromagnetic beams bouncing and sliding through watery matter. The innate curiosity that leads Galvez to look beyond the obvious has served him […]

Party balloons can no longer be taken for granted: there’s a worldwide shortage of helium. Prices quadrupled between 2000 and 2012, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. But a new helium-recovery system will put 51����’s science laboratories at the forefront of efforts to conserve the dwindling supply of this increasingly expensive gas.

Using the night sky to explain the culture of different societies is a practice familiar to Professor Anthony Aveni. In early December, the distinguished astronomy and anthropology professor co-hosted a symposium intended to spark a dialogue about Native American sacred sites and exploring their connections to cosmic events.

An international collaboration of astronomers that includes Jeff Bary, 51���� associate professor of physics and astronomy, has published an article about the discovery of a “planet-forming lifeline” in a nearby triple-star system in the journal Nature. Using the recently commissioned Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) located in the Atacama desert in Chile, the group, led […]

51���� students will have the opportunity to get closer to the stars thanks to a three-year arrangement that provides them with valuable access to a world-class telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.

51���� students are sharing their experiences conducting research with faculty members on campus and in the field. This post is by Katie Karnes ’17, an astrogeophysics major from Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s 3:45 a.m. on a Thursday and I’m staring at the four monitors in front of me, trying to focus on saving the files correctly. […]

51���� students are sharing their experiences conducting research with faculty members on campus and in the field. This post is by Brett Christensen ’16, a biophysics and philosophy double major from Marilla, N.Y. This summer, I’m studying barnacles — impressive little organisms that live in the ocean. As a biophysics and philosophy double major, I […]

Two interdisciplinary science research projects featuring collaborations among faculty from 51���� and from around the world have been awarded funding by the Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute at 51����. The projects support the core mission of the institute, which aims to foster the creation of new knowledge that is obtainable only through the development of sustained […]

Jeff Bary, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, talks about how his passion for astronomy developed, his research interests, favorite course to teach, and more in this Q&A. An astronomer is born. When I was nine, a friend gave me a book about astronomy titled What’s Up There? by Dinah Moche, which I read countless […]

Professor Tom Balonek and students in his Solar System Astronomy and his Astronomical Techniques courses were lucky enough Tuesday night to observe the aurora borealis from campus.