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Reliable websites for Astronomical News and Information

As the newest research area in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, the Astronomy Group is focused on Observational Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology, specifically high redshift galaxies, resolved stellar populations, supernovae, and Antarctic telescopes.

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile, is the largest astronomical project in existence. ALMA will be a single telescope of revolutionary design, composed initially of 66 high precision antennas located on the Chajnantor plateau, 5000 meters altitude in northern Chile.

The Bolshoi simulation is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet made ("bolshoi" is the Russian word for "great" or "grand").  The first two of a series of research papers describing Bolshoi and its implications have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The first data release of Bolshoi outputs, including output from Bolshoi and also the BigBolshoi or MultiDark simulation of a volume 64 times bigger than Bolshoi, has just been made publicly available to the world's astronomers and astrophysicists.

Over the weekend, Jupiter was apparently struck by an unknown object, probably a comet or an asteroid. The discovery was made by Anthony Wesley in Australia, an amateur astronomer well-known in both the amateur and professional astronomy communities.