First Detection of Heavy Element From Star Merger

This page originally appeared on @THEU & Adapted from NASA Webb Space Telescope. “We only know of a handful of kilonovas with any certainty, and this is only the second one for which we have such detailed spectral information” said Tanmoy Laskar, assistant professor at the University of Utah, of the first detection of we have of […]

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New study questions decades-long understanding of gamma ray bursts

This page originally appeared on @THEU Adapted from a release by Francis Reddy, senior science writer for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.   On Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022, a pulse of intense gamma-ray radiation swept through our solar system, saturating detectors on numerous spacecraft and sending astronomers across the world scurrying to train their fastest and […]

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U of U PandA alum is Voyagers’ deputy project scientist

This article originally appeared in the  Princeton University news The twin Voyager spacecraft captured the public imagination in the 1970s and ’80s as Earth’s first ambassadors to the outer planets, providing close-up images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 leapt skyward first, on August 17, 1977, followed a few weeks later by Voyager […]

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U astrophysicist Dan Wik is member of team whose proposal has been selected by NASA for further study

NASA has selected four mission proposals submitted to the agency’s Explorers Program for further study. U astrophysicist Dan Wik is a member of the STAR-X Proposal Team, one of the two Astrophysics Medium Explorer missions selected by NASA for further study. The proposals include missions that would study exploding stars, distant clusters of galaxies, and […]

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