Astronomy Research Program
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| The telescope at the Mt. Lemmon Observing Facility (Arizona), owned by the University of Minnesota. The telescope offers students a unique opportunity for hands-on experience with a research-grade telescope. |
Research areas of the Astronomy Department at Minnesota include comets, star formation and stellar evolution, novae, supernova remnants, the interstellar medium and galactic structure, structure and evolution of galaxies, gravitational lensing and cosmology. Instrumentation development in spectroscopy, photometry and polarimetry is concentrated in the infrared. Theoretical and computational astrophysics deal with gas dynamics as well as visualization of 3-D astrophysical simulations.
In addition to departmental telescopes at O'Brien and Mt. Lemmon, researchers use the national optical and infrared facilities at Kitt Peak, Cerro Tololo, Mauna Kea, the Hubble Space Telescope and the radio telescopes at Greenbank, Arecibo and the Very Large Array. The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) has significant departmental involvement. The department is also expecting to join the Large Binocular Telescope project in Arizona and thereby obtain guaranteed access to an entire suite of optical telescopes from 0.9 to 8.4 meters in aperture as well as a 10 meter submillimeter radio telescope.
Astronomy Faculty
| Kris Davidson | |
| Lucy Fortson | High-energy astrophysics, gamma-ray astronomy, extragalactic astronomy including active galactic nuclei and barred spirals; Developing online citizen science as a method to solve research problems with large datasets; physics education research. |
| Howard French | |
| Robert Gehrz | |
| Roberta Humphreys | Luminous stars, stellar evolution, optical spectroscopy, galactic structure
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| Thomas W. Jones | Theoretical and computational astrophysics, acceleration of cosmic rays, physics of diffusive shock acceleration, magnetohydrodynamics, supernova remnant dynamics, radio galaxy dynamics, galaxy clusters |
| Terry J. Jones | Astronomical polarimetry, Infrared astronomy, Comets and Interstellar Magnetic Fields. |
| Lawrence Rudnick | Interactions of astrophysical relativistic plasmas in supernova remnants and clusters of galaxies with thermal plasmas from 10^4 to 10^7K. Studied through radio, X-ray and optical observations. |
| M. Claudia Scarlata | Galaxy formation and evolution: massive galaxies, evolution of galaxy structure.
Lyα line as a cosmological tool: escape of Lyα photons, large-scale structure, Lyα blobs.
Reionization: Lyman continuum escape fraction, IR background fluctuations |
| Evan Skillman | Extragalactic Observational Astronomy;
Specializing in: Chemical Evolution of Galaxies, Structure and
Evolution of Dwarf Galaxies, H II Region Abundances, Star Formation, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, Cluster Galaxies |
| Liliya L.R. Williams | Cosmology; distribution of dark matter;
gravitational lensing; formation of structure |
| Charles E. Woodward | Solar system comets; classical novae and CVs; evolved stellar populations. |
| Paul Woodward | |
| John Dickey | Radio Spectroscopy of the Milky Way and other galaxies. |
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