Astronomy

a large group of people in front of the Franklin Institute building with a science demonstration (with smoke and the aftermath of an explosion that caused colored balls to fly into the air) in the foreground

Philadelphia: The new city of science

Penn researchers will be involved in a weeklong series of interactive activities and events across the city as part of the Philadelphia Science Festival.

Erica K. Brockmeier ・

a large black circle in the center of the milky way galaxy with a very small Sun in the background

The search for Planet 9, 10, and beyond

Planetary scientists and cosmologists at Penn work together to find planets that might be hiding in the far reaches of the solar system.

Erica K. Brockmeier ・

a satellite flying above earth with the moon in the distant background

Solar system exploration Q&A with Cullen Blake

Blake, an observational astronomer at Penn who specializes in the search for exoplanets, discusses the busy start of 2019 in the research of solar system exploration.

Erica K. Brockmeier ・

Dark energy telescope with star trails

Dark Energy Survey completes six-year mission

A global research effort to map a portion of the sky in unprecedented detail is coming to an end, but the task of learning more about the expansion of the universe has only just begun.

Erica K. Brockmeier ・

Presentation ceremony with background image of Kane and Mele

Electric bond

Behind the discovery of a new class of electronic materials is a 20-year collaboration between two Penn physicists, winners of the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Angelo Fichera ・

BLAST telescope with Mark Devlin and students

Up, up, and away

Mark Devlin and his team behind BLAST are about to embark on another scientific adventure in Antarctica, this time measuring how stars form in our galaxy.

Lauren Hertzler ・



In the News


The Wall Street Journal

Russia aims to restore prestige in race to moon’s south pole

Benjamin L. Schmitt of the School of Arts & Sciences and the Weitzman School of Design says that sentiment in the scientific and astronaut communities has begun to shift toward a future in which NASA and Roscosmos are no longer close partners.

FULL STORY →

Scientific American

Audio astronomy unlocks a universe of sound

College of Arts and Sciences fourth-year Sarah Kane discusses her use of data analysis and machine learning to circumvent her blindness in studying astronomy.

FULL STORY →

The Guardian

UK joins international effort to uncover first moments of the universe

In a statement for the Simons Observatory, Mark Devlin of the School of Arts & Sciences says that new telescopes and researchers from the UK will make a significant addition to their efforts to examine the origins of the universe.

FULL STORY →

Space

The ‘megacomet’ Bernardinelli-Bernstein is the find of a decade. Here’s the discovery explained

Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein of the School of Arts & Sciences comment on being an unlikely pair to have discovered the largest icy-bodied comet which is named in their honor.

FULL STORY →

USA Today

Fact check: 62-mile-wide mega comet unlikely to hit Earth, will just pass by it in 2031

Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about the giant comet they recently discovered. “There is no possibility of this thing getting any closer to Earth than Saturn gets,” said Bernstein.

FULL STORY →

USA Today

The largest comet ever discovered in modern times is zooming toward the sun

Gary Bernstein of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about the giant comet he and Ph.D. candidate Pedro Bernardinelli discovered. "We have the privilege of having discovered perhaps the largest comet ever seen—or at least larger than any well-studied one—and caught it early enough for people to watch it evolve as it approaches and warms up," Bernstein said.

FULL STORY →