University of Washington

OCTOBER 2020

LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

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: from asteroids of the Solar System, the origins of planetary systems, or the structure of our Milky Way, to imagining and building computing systems that allow us to do such studies — whether it’s data systems for the upcoming Bn$1 Rubin Observatory or new cloud-based data analysis platforms...

Read Director's full letter.

UPDATES

Associate Director Professor James Davenport

Meet DiRAC’s Research Team: Dr. James Davenport

DiRAC is pleased to introduce the new Associate Director of our Institute, Professor James (Jim) Davenport. Davenport received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2015, working on exploring magnetic activity from low-mass stars using NASA’s Kepler mission...

DiRAC & Astronomy on Tap Seattle Present: Astronomy at Home

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 changing our view to the night sky!
Tune in on Oct 8th at 7pm: New Talk!
View all talks on our YouTube channel

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Exterior of Vera C. Rubin Observatory building

Photometric Redshifts with the LSST II

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 photometric redshifts measure how much the light...

Studying the first-known asteroid to orbit the Sun closer than Venus

DiRAC research scientist Sarah Greenstreet recently published a paper on the orbital stability of the first-known asteroid discovered on an orbit entirely interior to the orbit of Venus. Greenstreet and colleagues were the first to predict that such asteroids should exist back in 2012...

Photometric Biases in Modern Surveys

Precise brightness measurements, or photometry, are essential for many areas of astronomy. DiRAC Postdoctoral Fellow Stephen Portillo, together with collaborators Joshua Speagle and Douglas Finkbeiner, published the paper “Photometric Biases in Modern Surveys” which illustrates a measurement bias...

SUPPORT US

Your gifts make a difference...

Strengthen our department through the DIRAC Program Fund which is perhaps the single most important resource for the department. Gifts to this fund provide unrestricted support that can be directed where it is needed most.

We are grateful to our supporters!