Astronomy Department

Foss Hill is the place for gatherings. Commencement, Spring Fling, baseball games, the first snow fall. They are all occasions for people to grace the grass. Some do it in the spirit of achievement and others in the name of pure, good ‘ole fashioned fun. On April 8, hundreds of Wesleyan students, faculty, staff, and local community members came together on the University green for a different reason—wonder—as a partial solar eclipse passed above them. The Astronomy Department hosted an eclipse viewing on Foss Hill and in the Van Vleck Observatory in partnership with the Russell Library. Organizers passed out…

By Rose Chen '26 Students and members of the community gathered at Van Vleck Observatory (VVO) on the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 14 for solar eclipse and astronomy-related fun. Despite the cloudy weather, attendees received eclipse glasses for safe future viewings and a planetarium show, as well as books available to check out from Russell Library and demonstrations in both English and Spanish from graduate students in the astronomy department. “I think, of course, everybody was disappointed that the clouds didn't cooperate today,” Associate Professor of Astronomy and Integrative Sciences Meredith Hughes said. “But it's never cloudy in the planetarium,…

Each year at Commencement, Wesleyan University recognizes three outstanding faculty members with the awarding of the Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching. The University announces that this year’s recipients are Matthew Garrett, associate professor of English; A. Meredith Hughes, associate professor of astronomy; and Tushar Irani, associate professor of philosophy and Letters. Underscoring Wesleyan’s commitment to its scholar-teachers, these annual prizes are made possible by gifts from the family of the late Frank G. Binswanger Sr., Hon’85. Recipients are chosen each spring by a committee composed of faculty and members of the Alumni Association Executive Committee based upon strong recommendations…

The past year began in uncertainty due to the global pandemic and the ongoing strife happening in our country and throughout the world. However, the Wesleyan University community persevered and thrived. Faculty explored new and innovative ideas, and students grew in ways that they couldn’t have anticipated. Throughout the year the Wesleyan Connection was there to document the life of a place that is always creative, always pushing for a better and more just world. Here’s a small sampling of the stories that mattered this past year: January The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the Carceral Connecticut Project, a multidisciplinary…

NASA’s largest telescope in space, JWST, is proving to be powerful enough to measure atmospheric chemicals on WASP-39b, a planet orbiting a star 700 light years away, and find sulfur dioxide, an element found in Earth’s ozone layer. “This is a mind-blowing demonstration of the capabilities of this telescope,” said Professor of Astronomy Seth Redfield, whose research group has been receiving early information from the telescope since its launch as a member of a JWST Early Release Science team. “There is a world that is hundreds of light years away and we can tell you how much sulfur dioxide is…

Seth Redfield’s delight couldn’t be more apparent on the day the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope came through. On July 11 NASA released images of the Carina Nebula; Stephan’s Quintet (a galaxy cluster), atmospheric readings of WASP-96b, a planet orbiting a distant star; and the Southern Ring Nebula. While the images were certainly dreamlike and breathtaking, showing the oldest documented light in the universe from 13 billion years ago, it was the events of day two that got Redfield really excited. It was then that he, and scientists across the country, would start receiving raw data from…

Every summer, Anna Fehr '23 would cherish family camping trips to the mountains in California. There, she could see something many people—especially city residents—rarely get to experience: a truly dark night sky. "I remember seeing the Milky Way and just being blown away by the sheer number of stars," she recalls. "I think I knew at the time that each star was like another sun, and it was just impossible to imagine the scope of what I could see with a naked eye. Also, my parents both have August birthdays, so we would go up to the mountains during the…

NASA's new infrared telescope, which launched on Dec. 25, 2021, will help researchers like Wesleyan's Seth Redfield explore the universe in ways like never before. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is accessible to the worldwide scientific community, offers scientists the ability to explore the solar system, galactic evolution, the early universe, and the formation of stars and planets like never before. The telescope will also observe planets orbiting other stars, known as exoplanets. Professor of Astronomy Seth Redfield, a member of the JWST's Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program (ERS), will work with scholars from around…

Using high-resolution data obtained from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, Wesleyan University Professor of Astronomy Seth Redfield can show the conditions the Sun encountered traveling through space over the past 5 million years. Redfield will present his findings Jan. 12, 2022 as part of a press conference associated with the American Astronomical Society’s previously planned annual conference. This work was a close collaboration of Redfield with Hunter Vannier ’20, and a major component of Vannier's senior thesis. Vannier is now a PhD student at Purdue University working on lunar mineralogy. By focusing on eight paths, each of…

By Maia Dawson '23 In the Lunar lab on the third floor of the Exley Science Center, Thomas Davoren MA ’22, thumbed through scientist David Walker’s handwritten notes from 1970, and inspected samples retrieved from the moon in 1969. Found in Davoren’s work are clues to the origins of Earth’s glowing satellite. Davoren was among the students awarded a Fall 2021 NASA Connecticut Space Consortium Fellowship. In a paper written for a conference in 2020 in Houston, Davoren detailed his discovery of Chromite-Ulvöspinel-Pyroxene (CUSP) inclusions. These unique, microscopic crystalline structures appeared first to Davoren in basaltic rocks retrieved from the…

In recognition of their career achievements, the following faculty members are being appointed to endowed professorships, effective July 1, 2021: Erik Grimmer-Solem, professor of history, is receiving the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Professorship in the College of Social Studies, established in 2008. Abigail Hornstein, associate professor of economics, is receiving the Woodhouse/Sysco Professorship of Economics, established in 2002. Edward Moran, professor of astronomy, is receiving the John Monroe Van Vleck Professorship of Astronomy, established in 1982. Suzanne OConnell, professor of earth and environmental sciences, is receiving the Harold T. Stearns Professorship of Earth Sciences, established in 1984. Francis Starr, professor…

Ilaria Carleo, a postdoc working with Associate Professor of Astronomy Seth Redfield, co-authored a paper called “Five carbon- and nitrogen-bearing species in a hot giant planet’s atmosphere,” which details the discovery of six different molecules in the atmosphere of a hot, gas giant exoplanet called HD209458b. The paper, published in Nature on April 7, discusses known information about the exoplanet, as well as the process by which these molecules were discovered using observations from the Galileo National Telescope. “Now that the analysis technique has been optimized, we are investigating the presence of these molecules in the atmosphere of other hot-Jupiters…

Gallery: Wesleyan, Local Communities Flock to Foss Hill for Eclipse

Community Views the Solar Eclipse

2023 Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching Announced

Year in Review: 2022

Space Telescope Measures Chemicals in Planet’s Atmosphere

Wesleyan Astronomy Prof Getting First Glimpse at Webb Telescope Data

Fehr ’23 to Study Debris Disks, Exoplanet as Goldwater Scholar

NASA’s New Telescope Offers Redfield Opportunity to Expand Exoplanet Research

Conditions Around the Sun 5 Million Years Ago Now Known, Wesleyan Study Says

Graduate Students Awarded NASA Connecticut Space Grants

Faculty Appointed Endowed Professorships

Carleo Co-Authors Paper in Nature on Molecular Discovery in Space