Department of Astronomy

A special algorithm designed to spot dangerous near-Earth asteroids appears to be so good it has spotted its very first one during an initial test. The UW's Mario Jurić, professor of astronomy, and Ari Heinze, research scientist in astronomy, are quoted.

A skyscraper-size asteroid was revealed in year-old telescope data thanks to a new algorithm that could change the way near-Earth objects are discovered. Mario Juric, professor of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

A new technique for finding potentially hazardous asteroids before they find us has chalked up its first success. Ari Heinze, research scientist in astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

An asteroid discovery algorithm — designed to uncover near-Earth asteroids for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming 10-year survey of the night sky — has identified its first “potentially hazardous” asteroid, a term for space rocks in Earth’s vicinity that scientists like to keep an eye on. The roughly 600-foot-long asteroid, designated 2022 SF289, was discovered during a test drive of the algorithm with the ATLAS survey in Hawaii. Finding 2022 SF289, which poses no risk to Earth for the foreseeable future, confirms that the next-generation algorithm, known as HelioLinc3D, can identify near-Earth asteroids with fewer and more dispersed observations than required by today’s methods. That is important because, though scientists know of more than 2,000 near-Earth asteroids, they estimate that another 3,000 await discovery!

A poem by alum Patricia Clark (BA, 1974), about a UW astronomy class she took 51 years ago, is now headed to the moon on a NASA flight. 

Astronomers spotted a stellar explosion in the Pinwheel Galaxy last month. Within a week, James Davenport, research assistant professor of astronomy at the UW, and his colleagues were searching the stars for radio signals from alien civilizations who might have seen the same thing.

Recent recognition of the University of Washington includes the Bloomberg Law 2022 Law School Innovation Program “Top Legal Education Program” for the UW Tech Policy Lab, 2023 Seattle Aquarium Conservation Research Award for Vera Trainer and 2023 Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award for Emily Levesque.

Students from the Lummi Nation School visited the University of Washington in earlh February for a real-time Q&A with astronaut Josh Cassada aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Cassada helped do space research on a plant science experiment the students sent to the ISS.

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Something is amiss in the Butterfly Nebula. When a team led by astronomers at the University of Washington compared two exposures of this planetary nebula that had been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 and 2020, they saw dramatic changes in the material within its "wings." As the team will report on Jan. 12 at the 241^st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, powerful winds are apparently driving complex alterations of material within the Butterfly Nebula, behavior not seen in planetary nebulae to date. The researchers want to understand how such activity is possible from what should be a “sputtering, largely moribund star with no remaining fuel.

On Jan. 11 at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, a team led by scientists at the University of Washington and the Center for Computational Astrophysics reported something unexpected about the distinct populations of stars that make up the Triangulum galaxy: In this satellite galaxy, a close companion of the much larger Andromeda galaxy, old and new stars occur in separate parts of the galaxy's structure, something not seen in galaxies like our own and so far not reporter for other satellite galaxies.

University of Washington astronomers were on the lookout for “stars behaving strangely” when an automated alert from pointed them to Gaia17bpp, a star that had gradually brightened over a 2 1/2-year period. But follow-up analyses indicated that Gaia17bpp wasn’t changing. Instead, the star is likely part of a rare type of binary system. Its apparent brightening was the end of a years-long eclipse by an unusual, "dusty" stellar companion.

In a study published Dec. 8 in Nature Astronomy, an international research team, led by Orsola De Marco of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, analyzed 10 highly detailed exposures taken by the JWST of the Southern Ring Nebula. Their calculations show the central star that ejected the expanding nebula gas was originally three times the mass of the sun, and that unseen companions shaped the nebula's intricate features.

Astronomers at the DiRAC Institute have been preparing for a flood of data from the new Rubin Observatory. Now undergrads have joined the effort.

A novel algorithm developed by University of Washington researchers to discover asteroids in the solar system has proved its mettle. The first candidate asteroids identified by the algorithm — known as Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR — have been confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, according to a May 31 announcement by the B612 Foundation.