Posted on by DIRAC Institute
As we come to a close of a challenging but scientifically exciting academic year, I’m delighted to share in this newsletter some of the work and discoveries made by DiRAC researchers over the past months. We start with a profile…
Read MoreCategory: 2021 June, Newsletters, Visitors
Posted on by DIRAC Institute
Stephen Portillo’s research focuses on using advances in statistics and machine learning to allow more science to be done with existing astronomical data sets. On the statistics front, he has been developing probabilistic cataloging, a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo…
Read MoreCategory: 2021 June, Newsletters
Posted on by DIRAC Institute
Over the past year, James Davenport (research assistant professor, and the Associate Director of the DiRAC Institute) and his team at the University of Washington have studied the eclipsing binary system, HS Hydrae. This star is one of rare class…
Read MoreCategory: 2021 June, Newsletters
Posted on by DIRAC Institute
One of the significant research focuses at the DiRAC Institute has been the development of next generation asteroid and comet discovery algorithms. DiRAC researchers have published a pre-print detailing one such algorithm called “Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery” (THOR). Applied to…
Read MoreCategory: 2021 June, Newsletters
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Type Ia supernovae are some of the most powerful tools for testing different theories of gravity. These supernovae are explosions of massive stars that all look remarkably similar. By measuring how bright a supernova is, we can figure out how…
Read MoreCategory: 2021 June, Newsletters
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Surveys like ZTF and the LSST on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory are improving our understanding for nearly every area of modern astronomy. Sometimes, however, these large projects discover something truly unexpected… James Davenport (UW research assistant professor, and the…
Read MoreCategory: 2021 June, Newsletters
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The groundbreaking advances in cosmological astrophysics to be made by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) all rely, at least in part, on accurate photometric redshift estimates for billions galaxies in our Universe. These…
Read MoreCategory: 2020 October, Newsletters
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Welcome to the DiRAC Institute newsletter, and to the new academic year! Allow me to begin by introducing myself: I’m Mario Juric, Associate Professor of Astronomy at UW and the new Director of DiRAC. My interests span science and technology:…
Read MoreCategory: 2020 October, Newsletters
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DiRAC is pleased to introduce the new Associate Director of our Institute, Professor James (Jim) Davenport. Davenport received his PhD from the University of Washington in 2015, working on exploring magnetic activity from low-mass stars using NASA’s Kepler mission. He…
Read MoreCategory: 2020 October
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Once per month, we invite you to join us for an evening with a UW astronomer and participate in talks and live conversations about topics that vary from searching for the most mysterious stars in our Galaxy to the Starlink satellites…
Read MoreCategory: 2020 October, Newsletters
CHARLES & LISA SIMONYI
WASHINGTON RESEARCH FOUNDATION
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
B612 FOUNDATION
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
HEISING-SIMONS FOUNDATION
NASA