Department of Astronomy

Astronaut Michael Anderson, who perished in the space shuttle Columbia, earned his B.S. from the UW College of Arts and Sciences in physics and astronomy. 

A childhood interest in astronomy, renewed in adulthood, led David Brooks to support postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of Astronomy. 

Five A&S alumni who have been astronauts talk about their experiences.

Scientists once thought that post-starburst galaxies scattered all of their gas and dust — the fuel required for creating new stars — in violent bursts of energy, and with extraordinary speed. Now, a team led by University of Washington postdoctoral researcher Adam Smercina reports that these galaxies don’t scatter all of their star-forming fuel after all. Instead, data from the Chile-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, reveals a more complex process at work.

Julianne Dalcanton, professor emeritus of astronomy, explains the dramatic deep space collision of two galaxies.