Spotlight on Astronomy

NASA has announced it will award the Distinguished Public Service Medal, its highest honor, to astronomer Yervant Terzian, the Tisch Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

InSight’s primary mission is to study Mars’ geology to learn more about the planet’s formation and current condition. The pressure sensor’s job is to “clean up” the data from the seismometer by eliminating vibrations caused air pressure changes from the Martian weather.

Martha Haynes, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy, led an audience of students and faculty on a “journey across space and time” April 25 in Philip Lewis Hall.

Lisa Kaltenegger is one of the women featured in this special article collection who are ground-breaking leaders of their disciplines and advocates for the advancement of science.

Astrophysicist Saul Teukolsky will explain gravitational waves and describe how he and his colleagues at Cornell used supercomputers to show that the waves came from black holes.

Led by Yu-Cian Hong (Cornell University), a team of scientists has now explored the fate of exomoons in planet–planet scattering situations using a suite of N-body numerical simulations.

An international group of astronomers has found that the Cornell-discovered fast radio burst FRB 121102 – a brief, gigantic pulse of radio waves from 3 billion light years away – passes through a veil of magnetized plasma. This causes the cosmic blasts to “shout and twist,” which will help the scientists determine the source.

NASA has selected two finalist concepts for a robotic mission planned to launch in the mid-2020s: a comet sample return mission, Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR), Principal Investigator: Steve Squyres.

Rachel Bean, professor of astronomy and senior associate dean of undergraduate education for the College of Arts and Sciences, is among a team of 27 scientists who won a share of the $3 million 2018 Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics Dec. 3.