Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) logo

On May 22, 2024 an international team of researchers, including CIERA Professor Daniel Lecoanet, published a paper in Nature that brings scientists closer than ever before to solving a 400-year-old solar mystery that stumped even famed astronomer Galileo Galilei. Since first observing the sun’s magnetic activity, astronomers have struggled to pinpoint where the process originates.

Between May 10 – 14, 2024 a series of powerful solar storms led to the production of visible aurorae far further towards the equator than normal. This photo was taken by CIERA graduate student Imran Sultan, amateur astrophotographer and member of Professor Claude-André Faucher-Giguère‘s research group. Sultan took this photo on May 10 in Evanston.

Many CIERA members travelled to the April 8th solar eclipse’s path of totality, including graduate student Imran Sultan. This photo was taken from Millinocket, Maine, the last part of the US on the path of totality. Totality is the only time we can see the sun’s corona with our eyes, when the moon has fully eclipsed the

Many CIERA members travelled to the April 8th solar eclipse’s path of totality, including graduate student Imran Sultan. This photo was taken from Millinocket, Maine, the last part of the US on the path of totality. Moments before totality, we can see Baily’s Beads, which is sunlight going through the mountains, craters, and valleys on the moon.

Many CIERA members travelled to the April 8th solar eclipse’s path of totality, including graduate student Imran Sultan. This photo was taken from Millinocket, Maine, the last part of the US on the path of totality. The phenomenon pictured here is called the “Diamond Ring” and it occurs seconds before totality, just as the moon is

This composite image depicts photographer and CIERA graduate student Imran Sultan’s progress shooting the Solar System over 2022-2023. Sultan captured the Sun, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon. Each object in the photo is not to scale (in terms of the angular size of the objects in our sky), since different equipment and processing

Interestingly, our moon has its own rich colors due to the variety of minerals which compose it– these colors are invisible to the human eye but were all captured by photographer and CIERA graduate student Imran Sultan‘s camera. To improve the color signal Sultan “stacked” or combined over 100 photos, and made saturation adjustments to increase

The April 8, 2024 solar eclipse, photographed by CIERA Postdoctoral Associate Meng Sun. This image of the partial eclipse before totality was captured in New Castle, Indiana, USA. Sun spots can be seen just above the moon and on the upper left of the sun. New Castle was located close to the center of eclipse’s

The April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, photographed by CIERA Postdoctoral Associate Meng Sun. This composite image of all phases of the eclipse was captured in New Castle, Indiana, USA. New Castle was located close to the center of eclipse’s path of totality, meaning that totality lasted longer than at the edges of the path

The May 2023 full moon, photographed by graduate student and CIERA member Imran Sultan. This image won runner-up in the 2023 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition’s astronomy category. “The May full moon is known as the Flower Moon, a name originating from the Algonquin peoples that marks the blooming of flowers during spring. This year’s

For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope has been used to directly image an exoplanet — that’s a planet outside of our solar system. Although it’s not the first time an exoplanet has been directly imaged, it is the first time the Webb Telescope’s powerful gaze has been turned to the task. And

This image shows the exoplanet HIP 65426 b in different bands of infrared light, as seen from the James Webb Space Telescope: purple shows the NIRCam instrument’s view at 3.00 micrometers, blue shows the NIRCam instrument’s view at 4.44 micrometers, yellow shows the MIRI instrument’s view at 11.4 micrometers, and red shows the MIRI instrument’s