University of Wisconsin–Madison

Astronomy

The dome of the Southern African Large Telescope against a blue sky — Hello from Day 8! After several days of immersing ourselves in anthropology with UW Professor Travis Pickering, his undergraduate field school students and his South African collaborators, on Sunday, July 16, Justin, Jeff and I gathered our belongings, ate a quick breakfast at our hotel in Johannesburg, and headed to […]

From anthropology to astronomy, stories from the road in South ...

July 19, 2017 by Kelly April Tyrrell

The Cradle of Humankind, in Guateng Province, South Africa. Photo by Kelly Yyrrell — A team of three from University Communications at UW–Madison – videographer Justin Bomberg, photographer Jeff Miller, and me, science writer Kelly April Tyrrell – have traveled 8,779 miles from Madison, Wisconsin to Johannesburg, South Africa in order help tell important UW-focused stories about origins: from the origins of life on Earth, […]

Adventures in South Africa to follow ‘origins’ stories

July 12, 2017 by Kelly April Tyrrell

featured_image:01_CONUS_OR_ABI_L2_CMIPF_G16_subset_midwest_s20170403_1715_conus copy — How do a bunch of Earth scientists celebrate Earth Day? The researchers and other staff at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) and the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) located at the University of Wisconsin–Madison arguably celebrate Earth Day every day by constantly advancing our knowledge of global […]

Earth Day, every day

April 21, 2017 by Eric Hamilton

A fall supermoon, which appears 14 percent bigger than normal, as seen from Madison, Wisconsin on November 14, 2016 — The following is a guest post from resident supermoon skeptic, Jim Lattis, a science historian and director of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s astronomy outpost, Space Place who says that, despite the hype behind a recent slew of “supermoons”: “I encourage people to go out and take a look. It’s always good […]

Supermoon skeptic says the moon is still pretty great

November 15, 2016 by Kelly April Tyrrell

Planetary nebula NGC 2818, a gaseous shroud of a dying, sun-like star in the southern constellation Pyxis. — Putting telescopes and astronomical instruments in space has long been a UW-Madison specialty. Since at least the early 1960s, when the late Wisconsin astronomer Arthur D. Code devised a cigar-box sized photometer for the X-15, the first rocket-powered plane to soar briefly in space, UW-Madison has been developing hardware – […]

Hubble and beyond

October 27, 2016 by trdevitt

An outburst of Perseid meteors lights up the sky in August 2009 in this time-lapse image. Stargazers expect a similar outburst during next week’s Perseid meteor shower, which will be visible overnight on Aug. 11 and 12//Credit: NASA/JPL — The following is a guest post from Jim Lattis, director of UW Space Place and astronomy historian from the UW-Madison Department of Astronomy: The Perseid meteors are one of our best and most reliable meteor showers of the year. Their peak activity typically now occurs on the nights of August 11-13, […]

How the Perseid meteor shower helped modernize astronomy

August 11, 2016 by Kelly April Tyrrell

Washburn Observatory, completed ca 1882, from the 1885 Wisconsin Blue Book. At the time, it was the third-largest reflecting telescope in the nation. — Replicas of five major scientific medals won by former UW-Madison astronomer Joel Stebbins more than 50 years ago are now on display in the astronomy department lobby, second floor, Sterling Hall on campus.

Medals mark lifetime of discovery by pioneering UW-Madison astronomer

September 28, 2015 by David Tenenbaum

Total eclipse of the harvest moon — On Saturday, 27 September 2015, the full moon – a harvest moon – will be at its closest point to Earth along its orbit. And it will also be in total eclipse. This rare event, called a Supermoon by some, hasn’t happened since 1982 and it won’t again until 2033. If our […]

Harvest Moon, Supermoon, and a total lunar eclipse

September 23, 2015 by Kelly April Tyrrell

Pluto from New Horizons — For nearly 10 years, the New Horizons spacecraft has been charging through space – the fastest spacecraft ever launched – on track to reach the icy outer edge of our solar system. The Kuiper Belt, as this area is known, is full of objects from icy boulder-sized rocks to dwarf planets […]

New Horizons takes a portrait of Pluto

July 14, 2015 by Kelly April Tyrrell