Fourteen outstanding high school seniors were selected for the AUI 2021 Scholarship—including 9 children of NRAO staff. Each scholarship awardee will receive a $3,500 scholarship, renewable for up to four years.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Radio astronomers can see hydrogen by the light it emits, reflects, and even absorbs. Because hydrogen is everywhere, it can tell stories about the cosmos from the Big Bang to today.
Join our host Summer Ash of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory as she talks about how hydrogen can tell us so much about the structure and evolution of the universe.
AUI and NRAO have announced the establishment of the National Astronomy Consortium (NAC) Bridge Scholarship Award program to assist and recognize NAC alums on their achievements as they enter graduate school.
Using data for more than 500 young stars observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), scientists have uncovered a direct link between protoplanetary disk structures—the planet-forming disks that surround stars—and planet demographics. The survey proves that higher mass stars are more likely to be surrounded by disks with “gaps” in them and that these gaps directly correlate to the high occurrence of observed giant exoplanets around such stars. These results provide scientists with a window back through time, allowing them to predict what exoplanetary systems looked like through each stage of their formation.
The 2021 Jansky Lectureship has been awarded to Professor Luis F. Rodriguez of the National University of Mexico, in recognition of his accomplishments as a scientist, an educator, a popularizer of astronomy and a mentor to a generation of radio astronomers.
A team of scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the young star Elias 2-27 have confirmed that gravitational instabilities play a key role in planet formation, and have for the first time directly measured the mass of protoplanetary disks using gas velocity data, potentially unlocking one of the mysteries of planet formation.
A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has completed the first census of molecular clouds in the nearby Universe. The study produced the first images of nearby galaxies with the same sharpness and quality as optical imaging and revealed that stellar nurseries do not all look and act the same. In fact, they’re as diverse as the people, homes, neighborhoods, and regions that make up our own world.
NRAO, Green Bank Telescope, and Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RI&S) are working in collaboration to improve planetary radar capabilities. With the addition of Qorvo’s Spatium power amplifier technology, the project now has the power to identify and characterize even small NEOs earlier with more precision.
A highly-detailed VLA image indicates that the jets of material propelled outward by young stars much more massive than the Sun may be very different from those ejected by less-massive young stars.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory has selected a contractor to develop a production-ready design and build a prototype antenna for the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). The ngVLA is proposed as an array of 263 dish antennas spread across North America to form a cutting-edge scientific tool for the coming decades.
