Department of Astronomy

It turns out that, if new estimates are right, half of the atoms in our galaxy could have been stolen from other galaxies. Jessica Werk, assistant professor of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

In five years, a sky-scanning telescope in Chile will begin hunting the heavens for asteroids on a collision course with Earth, scientists at the UW work to spot them.

NASA may be closing down its grand plan to study a piece of an asteroid up close, but the researchers who focus on near-Earth objects aren’t turning their backs on asteroids.

If exoplanets around M dwarfs host life, it’s probably very different from that on Earth

Lupita Tovar never expected to go to a four-year college. Now she's a UW graduate pursuing a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics.

An unexpected rain of spiders led to a lovely Twitter geek-out between astronomers and arachnologists.

Considerable attention has been devoted to the difficulties facing women in computer sciences, the problems and the search for solutions extend across the range of STEM fields.

Astronomers need to know how stars form and black holes burst -- and how to pry that information from the many terabytes of data that will stream from next-generation telescopes.

Calling all citizen scientists: The Australian National University wants you to join the search for supernovae.

David James, a visiting scientist with the University of Washington Department of Astronomy, assisted in the discovery of an exoplanet.

UW astronomer, Emily Levesque, is named as one of the 10 women in science who are changing the way we see the world.

A newly discovered planet around a distant star may jump to the top of the list of places where scientists should go looking for alien life. 

This week’s discovery of seven planets around a distant star has a connection right here at the University of Washington. The star is called TRAPPIST-1 and the scientist is Eric Agol.

Vera Rubin, the famous U.S. astronomer, died on Dec. 25. She was 88. Emily Levesque, an astronomer at the UW, is quoted.