UVic astronomers help discover new dwarf planet
An international team of astronomers including UVic researchers have discovered a new dwarf planet orbiting in the disk of small icy worlds beyond Neptune.
An international team of astronomers including UVic researchers have discovered a new dwarf planet orbiting in the disk of small icy worlds beyond Neptune.
An ocean explorer striving to preserve fragile marine ecosystems. A physicist unlocking the secrets of the universe. An oceanographer who makes science open and accessible to everyone. A writer who helps us interpret the trials and tribulations of modern life. And two engineers and an entrepreneur who came up with a brilliant idea and ran with it.
Adaptive optics system among research projects that put UVic at the head of major international collaborations Today, Canadian astronomy expertise—and leadership in international “big science” projects like the $1.6-billion Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT)—is securing valuable research time for Canadian scientists at these new facilities while also drawing millions of dollars of high-tech contracts to BC.
On July 14, the New Horizons spacecraft will make its closest approach to Pluto, flying within 7,750 miles of this enigmatic dwarf planet. The following University of Victoria faculty member is available to explain our fascination with Pluto and the…
CERN Director General Dr. Rolf Heuer to give inaugural Alan Astbury Public Lecture on April 27. The world’s most powerful particle accelerator came back online this month after a two-year hiatus. Already credited with the discovery of the Higgs boson (or “God particle”), the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the CERN facility at Geneva, Switzerland, holds the key to discovering the origin of mass, the nature of dark matter, and much more. As excitement is re-ignited about the LHC, UVic welcomes Dr. Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN, to the campus for a public talk on the collider’s potential.
Sara Ellison (physics and astronomy) has been awarded the Rutherford Memorial Medal in Physics from the Royal Society of Canada for her outstanding work in astrophysics. Ellison leads several international research programs that are using the world’s leading telescopes to understand how galaxies form and evolve. Her research has appeared in more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and includes numerous high-impact discoveries in the field of extragalactic observational astronomy.
We all joke about black holes in our everyday lives when something disappears. And we know from watching Star Trek and sci-fi movies that black holes are massive cosmic phenomena not to be messed with. But what are they really? And what role do they play in the evolution of galaxies?
Anyone needing proof that students love learning through research had only to attend the second annual Faculty of Science Honours Fest March 1, where students vied for thousands of dollars in prize money. The Bob Wright Centre lobby buzzed with action as the 48 competitors—almost triple the number from last year—presented their research to judges, fellow students and community members.
A surprising discovery about dwarf galaxies orbiting the much larger Andromeda galaxy suggests that conventional ideas regarding the formation of galaxies like our own Milky Way are missing something fundamental. In a paper published Jan. 3 in the prestigious journal Nature, an international team of astronomers including two University of Victoria professors describes the discovery that almost half of the 30 dwarf galaxies orbiting Andromeda do so in an enormous plane more than a million light years in diameter, but only 30,000 light years thick.
A surprising discovery about dwarf galaxies orbiting the much larger Andromeda galaxy suggests that conventional ideas regarding the formation of galaxies like our own Milky Way are missing something fundamental. In a paper published today in the pr…