AST Graduate Student Alexander Rasskazov successfully defended his PhD Dissertation
July 31, 2017
AST News
AST Faculty in LIGO-Virgo Scientific Collaboration help pinpoint merger
September 27, 2017
Mapping black hole collisions gives astronomers (and hitchhikers) a new guide, RIT researchers in LIGO-Virgo Scientific Collaboration help pinpoint merger. AST faculty researchers helped pinpoint the precise location of a gravitational wave signal—and the black hole merger that produced it—detected by gravitational wave observatories in the United States and in Europe. Full Article
AST Faculty Richard O'Shaughnessy gives talk at the Rochester Museum and Science Center
November 2, 2016
Science on the Edge Lectures, Rochester Museum and Science Center Wednesday, Nov. 2: 7pm
Gravitational Waves: Opening a new window on the universe
Richard O'Shaughnessy, AST program faculty in Astrophysical Sciences and Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology, discussed gravitational waves, which come from blackholes and other objects.
AST Faculty Joel Kastner will be a discussion leader at Gordon Conference
June 18, 2017
Joel Kastner will be a Discussion Leader at next week's Gordon Conference on Origins of Solar Systems Titled: "Making a Habitable Planet"
The Gordon Conference on Origins of Solar Systems brings together a diverse group of scientists to discuss research at the frontier of understanding how planets and planetary systems form. Invited speakers from the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmochemistry, planetary science, and geochemistry will present their latest findings. At this meeting discussions will take place with a focus on how the Earth and its analogs received their inventory of volatile compounds that provide the basis for a habitable world.
AST Faculty Michael Zemcov successful integration & test at NASA Wallops Flight Facility
April 11, 2017
AST Faculty Michael Zemcov took CSTARS, the undergraduate student-lead star tracking camera, to NASA Wallops Flight Facility in VA for integration and test. The group successfully integrated the instrument into the payload and took images of simulated stars at cryogenic temperatures at optical wavelengths, which is a first. Unfortunately they ran into trouble with the electronics and had to come off the mission, but we’re almost ready to fly.
AST Faculty Michael Zemcov published Nature paper on the Cosmic Optical Background
April 11, 2017
AST Faculty Michael Zemcov published Nature Paper: Measurement of the cosmic optical backgroundusing the long range reconnaissance imager onNew Horizons Full Article Here
Dr. Zemcov also published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal on: New Spectral Evidence of an Unaccounted Component of the Near-infrared Extragalactic Background Light from the CIBER Full Article Here
AST PhD Student Dennis Bowen's research featured on AAS Nova Website
April 3, 2017
A recent study led by AST PhD Student Dennis Bowen presents the first exploration of gas dynamics in relativistic binary black hole systems in which each black hole is surrounded by its own small accretion disk. View Full Article Here
Dark Matter & Dwarf Galaxies research featured in Astronomy Magazine Article
March 29, 2017
In a new study accepted for publication AST student Andrew Lipnicky and AST Faculty Sukanya Chakrabarti explore whether the current orientation of satellite galaxies around the Milky Way upholds or challenges the accepted model of dark matter. Full Article: http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/03/dark-matter-around-the-milky-way
AST Grad Students organize the Physics & Astronomy Exhibit at the Girls Soaring Event
January 23, 2017
AST Graduate students Triana Almeyda, Chi Nguyen, Brittany Vanderhoof and Meaghann Stoelting organized the Physics/Astronomy Spectroscopy exhibit at the Women in STEM@RIT Girls Soaring Event. This event is held to raise awareness of women in STEM fields to young girls.
From Left: B.Vanderhoof, C.Nguyen, T.Almeyda and M.Stoelting
AST Graduate Student Kristina Punzi accepted into the AAS Astronomy Ambassadors Program
January 9, 2017
Kristina Punzi, current AST PhD student, was accepted into the AAS Astronomy Ambassadors program ( https://aas.org/outreach/aas-astronomy-ambassadors-program). She was inducted at the 229th AAS meeting (January 2-3, 2017).
Kristina presented at the 229th American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, TX this past week (January 3-7, 2017). The title of her talk was: "An X-ray and Optical Spectroscopic Study of the Perplexing Star RZ Piscium." The undergraduate students she mentored during the 2016 summer REU (Lydia Gingerich - Haverford College, Tori Knapp - Ithaca College) presented a poster entitled: "The Evolutionary Status of the Enigmatic Field Star RZ Piscium: A Search for Comoving Companions." She was also interviewed by Astronomy Magazine about my research.
Mauela Campanelli presents: Black Hole Mergers, Gravitational Waves and their Gaseous Environments
October 7, 2016
Manuela Campanelli, AST Faculty and director of the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation, presented "Black Hole Mergers, Gravitational Waves and their Gaseous Environments" at the Gruber Cosmology Conference at Yale University on Oct. 7 in celebration of the Gruber Cosmology Prize presented in July to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, Ronald Drever and the entire LIGO team, including members of Campanelli's center, for the first detection of gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes. Link
AST Students & Faculty Present a the Hidden Monsters Workshop
August 8, 2016
SoPA faculty members Jeyhan Kartaltepe, Billy Vazquez and Andy Robinson, along with Astrophysical Sciences and Technology Ph.D. students Triana Almeyda and Yashashree Jadhav, presented some of their latest research at a Workshop on supermassive black holes in galaxies, “Hidden Monsters: Obscured Active Galactic Nuclei and Connections to Galaxy Evolution". Drs Robinson and Vazquez presented talks on a large observational campaign using the Spitzer Space Telescope to map the interstellar dust distribution in active galactic nuclei, while 4th-year PhD student Almeyda presented a poster on her computer simulations of time-varying infrared emission from the dust. Second-year PhD student Jadhav presented a poster on the first results from her project, which uses Hubble Space Telescope images to search for recoiling supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies. Dr Kartaltepe presented a talk on near infrared spectroscopic observations, obtained with the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, of distant galaxies hosting obscured active nuclei.
The workshop was hosted by Dartmouth College, in Hanover, NH, USA, 8th-12th August 2016.
From Left: Astrophysical Sciences and Technology PhD students Triana Almeyda and Yashashree Jadhav , at the "Hidden Monsters” workshop.