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APERTURE Telescope Conceptual Design Animation

Video

APERTURE Telescope Conceptual Design Animation

APERTURE: A Precise Extremely large Reflective Telescope Using Reconfigurable Elements. This is the deployment concept which was produced during the NIAC Phase I feasibility study. APERTURE is a UV-Visible telescope with a 16-m diameter primary mirror. The primary is a flexible membrane coated with magnetic smart material. The shape of the reflector can be corrected

Mel Ulmer / CIERA Northwestern

BLAST-TNG

Image

BLAST-TNG

Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope – The Next Generation (BLAST-TNG) BLAST is a 5,000 pound balloon-borne telescope bound for the stratosphere over Antarctica, to search for the origins of stars and planets. This photo was taken by graduate student Paul Williams in the summer of 2018 in Palestine, Texas at the Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility.

Gabriele Coppi / University of Pennsylvania

Revealing the Lives of Stars Through the Cataclysmic Collisions of Black Holes

Event

Revealing the Lives of Stars Through the Cataclysmic Collisions of Black Holes

Northwestern Physics and Astronomy student Mike Zevin presents a talk as part of the Northwestern Ready Set Go (RSG) program. The goals of the program are to increase awareness for the urgent need for excellent research communicators and to coach graduate and post doctoral researchers to improve their own presentation skills. The program focuses on three important

Northwestern's RSG Program

Balloons Above Antarctica: The Coolest Place to Put a Telescope

Event

Balloons Above Antarctica: The Coolest Place to Put a Telescope

Northwestern Physics and Astronomy student Paul Williams presents a talk as part of the Northwestern Ready Set Go (RSG) program. The goals of the program are to increase awareness for the urgent need for excellent research communicators and to coach graduate and post doctoral researchers to improve their own presentation skills. The program focuses on three important

Northwestern's RSG Program

Listening for Colliding Black Holes

Interview

Listening for Colliding Black Holes

Northwestern Physics and Astronomy student Michael Katz presents a talk as part of the Northwestern Ready Set Go (RSG) program. The goals of the program are to increase awareness for the urgent need for excellent research communicators and to coach graduate and post doctoral researchers to improve their own presentation skills. The program focuses on three important

Northwestern's RSG Program

Exploring the Invisible Universe with Computer Simulations

Event

Exploring the Invisible Universe with Computer Simulations

Northwestern Physics and Astronomy student Alex Gurvich presents a talk as part of the Northwestern Ready Set Go (RSG) program. The goals of the program are to increase awareness for the urgent need for excellent research communicators and to coach graduate and post doctoral researchers to improve their own presentation skills. The program focuses on three important

Northwestern's RSG Program

Exploring the Universe with Virtual Galaxies

Event

Exploring the Universe with Virtual Galaxies

Northwestern Physics and Astronomy student Zachary Hafen presents a talk as part of the Northwestern Ready Set Go (RSG) program. The goals of the program are to increase awareness for the urgent need for excellent research communicators and to coach graduate and post doctoral researchers to improve their own presentation skills. The program focuses on three important

Northwestern's RSG Program

Pulsars in the Snow Globes

Event

Pulsars in the Snow Globes

Northwestern Physics and Astronomy student Shi Ye presents a talk as part of the Northwestern Ready Set Go (RSG) program. The goals of the program are to increase awareness for the urgent need for excellent research communicators and to coach graduate and post doctoral researchers to improve their own presentation skills. The program focuses on three important

Northwestern's RSG Program

Highlights from Cosmos in Concert

Event

Highlights from Cosmos in Concert

Developed by astronomer and musician Kyle Kremer, Cosmos in Concert brings together astronomy and live classical music to entertain and educate audiences. Through multimedia shows, in-school residencies, and public outreach events, Cosmos in Concert introduces a new platform for science education and outreach. Cosmos in Concert

Kyle Kremer / Northwestern

Isolated Disc Galaxy

Video

Isolated Disc Galaxy

Simulation of an isolated disc galaxy, looking at the disc of the galaxy face on (top panels) and edge on (bottom panels). The left-hand panels show images of the stellar light, and is what we would see if we viewed this galaxy with a telescope such as Hubble. The right-hand panels show the gas in

Alex Richings / Northwestern

A Stellar Collision, Ripples In Space-Time, And The Origins Of Gold

Interview

A Stellar Collision, Ripples In Space-Time, And The Origins Of Gold

About 130 million years ago, two neutron stars collided, unleashing an explosion that rippled space-time and splattered the cosmos with a cocktail of heavy metals. Astronomers announced that they spotted the signals from that “kilonova” explosion, both in gravitational waves like the ones LIGO previously detected from merging black holes, and in signals across the

Science Friday

A 20 Solar Mass Star

Video

A 20 Solar Mass Star

This movie shows the evolution of a star 20 times more massive than our sun. The blue color of the star’s surface visible in the first frame is the result of this higher mass.

Credit: Stellar simulation by Vicky Kalogera, Bart Willems and Francesca Valsecchi. Visualization by Matthew McCrory. Funding: NSF and LIGO

Stellar encounters: Binary+single (exchange and collision)

Video

Stellar encounters: Binary+single (exchange and collision)

Binary+single encounter that leads to an exchange, followed by a second binary+single encounter that leads to a collision Within star clusters, close encounters between single and multiple stars can be frequent and may lead to the production of exotic stars like X-ray sources and blue stragglers. By using the small-N-body code FEWBODY and another visualization

Movies by Aaron Geller using IDL and MPEG Streamclip; dynamical calculation performed using FEWBODY / Funding: NSF

Stellar encounters: Triple+binary (collision)

Video

Stellar encounters: Triple+binary (collision)

Triple+binary encounter that leads to a collision Within star clusters, close encounters between single and multiple stars can be frequent and may lead to the production of exotic stars like X-ray sources and blue stragglers. By using the small-N-body code FEWBODY and another visualization software, a few visualizations of interesting stellar encounters were created. In

Movies by Aaron Geller using IDL and MPEG Streamclip; dynamical calculation performed using FEWBODY / Funding: NSF

Stellar encounters: Binary+single (collision)

Video

Stellar encounters: Binary+single (collision)

Binary + single encounter that leads to a collision Within star clusters, close encounters between single and multiple stars can be frequent and may lead to the production of exotic stars like X-ray sources and blue stragglers. By using the small-N-body code FEWBODY and another visualization software, a few visualizations of interesting stellar encounters were

Movies by Aaron Geller using IDL and MPEG Streamclip; dynamical calculation performed using FEWBODY / Funding: NSF

Stellar Encounters: Binary+single (exchange)

Video

Stellar Encounters: Binary+single (exchange)

Binary+single encounter that leads to an exchange Within star clusters, close encounters between single and multiple stars can be frequent and may lead to the production of exotic stars like X-ray sources and blue stragglers. By using the small-N-body code FEWBODY and another visualization software, a few visualizations of interesting stellar encounters were created. In

Movies by Aaron Geller using IDL and MPEG Streamclip; dynamical calculation performed using FEWBODY / Funding: NSF

The Late Evolution of Our Solar System

Video

The Late Evolution of Our Solar System

This movie, Life of the Pleiades, was generated from an interactive visualization that Aaron Geller developed with Mark SubbaRao using Uniview. The interactive version can be shown on a planetarium dome, or rendered into a movie (as shown here). A 3D version of this movie exists in the Space Visualization Lab at the Adler Planetarium.

Created by A. M. Geller and M. SubbaRao, using Uniview; music, narration and audio by A. M. Geller; dynamical calculation with stellar evolution performed using the NBODY6 code.

A 1 Solar Mass Star

Video

A 1 Solar Mass Star

This movie shows the evolution of a star as massive as our sun. Each star spends most of its life in a phase known as the main sequence, during which it burns hydrogen into helium at its center and it slowly expands (as the reference circles show) to accommodate the energy produced via this nuclear

Stellar simulation by Vicky Kalogera, Bart Willems and Francesca Valsecchi. Visualization by Matthew McCrory. / Funding: NSF and LIGO