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When astronomers use radio telescopes to gaze into the night sky, they typically see elliptical-shaped galaxies, with twin jets blasting from either side of their central supermassive black hole. But every once in a while — less than 10% of the time — astronomers might spot something special and rare: An X-shaped radio galaxy, with

On October 28, 2020 CIERA’s Shane Larson presented this public lecture titled A Storm of Stars: A Living History of the Milky Way in a virtual Zoom webinar format to an audience of nearly 450 viewers. Larson discussed how we came to understand the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and how our ideas about the

Dr. Marla Geha presents “The Saga Survey: Exploring Satellite Galaxies Around the Milky Way Analogs.” Dr. Geha is a professor of astronomy and the Director of Telescope Resources at Yale University. This seminar is part of the Astrophysics Seminar series at CIERA.

The Universe is vast beyond anything humans can easily comprehend, and it is easy to become overwhelmed by the immensity, disheartened by how insignificant we seem. But in the vastness there is a glimmer of truth that we should hold onto and use to guide us: in all the vastness we are, so far as

This lecture was presented by award-winning author and Yale professor Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan at Cahn Auditorium on October 24, 2019. Natarajan discussed how mapping over time encodes radical new scientific ideas. She walked through the history of the acceptance of new astronomical ideas, and talked about the status of several current transformative (and deeply contested)

An international team of astronomers, including Northwestern University’s Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, has discovered one of the largest structures ever observed in the Milky Way. A newly spotted pair of radio-emitting bubbles reach hundreds of light-years tall, dwarfing all other structures in the central region of the galaxy.

The length of a human life barely registers on the scale of cosmic time. In spite of our relatively tiny size and our limited time here on Earth, a single generation of humans can take giant leaps forward in our understanding of the Universe. Join us to find out how dramatically our story of the

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 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

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

Firefly is a portable web-based 3d visualization software developed in partnership between the Northwestern University Galaxy Formation and Visualization groups. It was developed with the data output of the FIRE simulations in mind but can visualize any 3d dataset (in coordinate or phase space). In this video I demonstrate some of the key features of