Beus Center for Cosmic Foundations

Cosmic clues: Metal-poor regions unveil potential method for galaxy growth

Inflows of gas created areas in spiral galaxy NGC 99 that contain unexpectedly low levels of metals (elements heavier than helium).  The discovery is helping astronomers understand how galaxies grow and form stars.  Read more

NASA-funded ASU study explores turbulence in molecular clouds

Giant molecular clouds are full of random, turbulent motions, which are caused by gravity — stirred by the galactic arms and winds, jets and explosions from young stars.  This new study allows scientists to see how turbulence driven structures evolve.  Read more

'Robotic eyes' help researchers explore the Big Bang in reverse

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument reveals evidence for relationship between black holes, dark energy.  Read more

Webb scientists confirm Hubble tension through lensed supernova discovery

The discovery is only the second measurement of the Hubble constant using time delays from a gravitationally lensed object, and the first time using a standard candle.  The team reports the value for the Hubble constant as 75.4 kilometers per second per megaparsec, plus 8.1 or minus 5.5. Read more

ASU making its mark across the universe

Prof. Rogier Windhorst's research with HST and JWST highlighted by ASU News along with other ASU researchers engaged with NASA.  Read more

NASA’s Webb Reveals Distorted Galaxy Forming Cosmic Question Mark

Beus Prize Fellow, Dr. Vincent Estrada-Carpenter, and colleagues have found a cosmic question mark.  The gravitationally lensed galaxy is helping astronomers see how galaxies like the Milky Way would have looked 7 billion years ago.  Read more

Sarah Saavedra awarded Killam Fellowship for study abroad at a Canadian University 

Saavedra is one of two students from ASU's Barrett, the Honors College to receive the award.  She will study astrophysics at McGill University, building on her ASU studies in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and research experience with Prof. Allison Noble.  Read more

Celebrating 3 faculty members who have been at ASU for 50 years or more

Regents Professor Sumner Starrfield one of three professors recognized for his long-time commitment to academia and students.  Read more
 

ASU's DORA CubeSat to be aboard upcoming space station resupply launch

The DORA CubeSat is a test bed for communications technology and future low-frequency radio astronomy projects.  The payload carries a wield-of-view optical receiver and two compact radio spectrometers spanning 50 to 200 MHz. Read more

Telescopes in Atacama Desert capture extreme starburst galaxy warped into fiery ring

ASU researchers contribute to study of rotating disk of molecular, ionized gas in one of the most luminous galaxies ever discovered.  Read more

Webb telescope reveals star clusters in Cosmic Gems arc

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers, including Arizona State University Regents and Foundation Professor Rogier Windhorst, an interdisciplinary scientist for JWST, has now detected five young, massive star clusters in the Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD1), a strongly lensed galaxy emitting light from when the universe was approximately 460 million years old, spanning 97% of cosmic history.  Read more

Data analysis with ASU SKYSURF team earns high school student first published research paper

Purvansh Bhatia, a recent graduate of BASIS Scottsdale, is the lead author of a paper recently published in the American Astronomical Society journal.  Bhatia collaborated with members of the SKYSURF research group, including Prof. Rogier Windhorst, Dr. Rolf Jansen, Dr. Tim Carleton, and graduate associate Rosalia O’Brien, all from the School of Earth and Space Exploration.  Read more

Associate professor shares her journey from NASA to ASU

For more than 20 years, Tracee Jamison-Hooks worked as an electrical engineer for NASA.  From leading space missions to designing and building spaceflight hardware and training students in space science and engineering, Arizona State University is proving that space is more than a distant place outside our reach.   Read more

Celebrating 34 years of space discovery with NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope has played a significant role in providing research opportunities for scientists and students at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, and ASU is continuing to build on this legacy with the James Webb Space Telescope.  Read more

James Webb Space Telescope identifies fossil star cluster in distant galaxy

Arizona State University Graduate Associate Jessica Berkheimer used NASA’s James Webb Telescope to identify an extraordinary set of globular star clusters in a distant galaxy not seen before in deep Hubble Space Telescope data. The discovery provides astronomers the opportunity to study the evolution of star clusters in the universe.  Read more

Hubble detects celestial 'String of Pearls' star clusters in galaxy collisions

The gravitational pull that forces collisions between galaxies creates tidal tails — long thin regions of stars and interstellar gas. The Hubble Space Telescope's vision is so sharp that it can see clusters of newborn stars strung along these tidal tails.  Read more

Team of astronomers led by ASU scientist discovers galaxy that shouldn’t exist

A team of astronomers, led by Arizona State University Assistant Research Scientist Tim Carleton, has discovered a dwarf galaxy that appeared in James Webb Space Telescope imaging that wasn’t the primary observation target.  Read more

NASA gears up for its next giant space telescope

NASA recently announced the selection of the Science, Technology, Architecture Review Team (START) to include Arizona State University professors Evan Scannapieco and Evgenya Shkolnik of the School of Earth and Space Exploration.  Read more

Webb Telescope's gravitational lens reveals distant objects behind 'El Gordo' galaxy cluster

The NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the largest, most powerful and complex telescope in space. By observing through nature's natural lens, Webb has captured a new image of distant and dusty objects never seen before, which are amplified behind the most massive and distant galaxy cluster known as “El Gordo,” or "The Fat One."   Read more

Einstein connects ASU professor, Holocaust survivor

Through brilliant new Webb Telescope images, researchers share proof of Albert Einstein theory with Arizona resident who met him 80 years ago.  Read more

Hubble, JWST together reveal vivid landscape of galaxies

Webb and Hubble have joined forces to study the galaxy cluster MACS0416, located about 4.3 billion light-years from Earth.  Their combined data yields a colorful panorama of blues and reds — colors that give clues to the distances of the galaxies. The resulting panchromatic image combines visible and infrared light to assemble one of the most comprehensive views of the universe ever taken.  Read more

Webb telescope PEARLS project unveils exquisite views of distant galaxies

For decades, the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes have provided us with spectacular images of galaxies. This all changed when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched in December 2021 and successfully completed commissioning during the first half of 2022. For astronomers, the universe, as we had seen it, is now revealed in a new way never imagined by the telescopes's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument. Read more

ASU mourns loss of Leo Beus, attorney and philanthropist

Leo Beus’ generosity reached almost every corner of Arizona State University. With his wife, Annette, Beus for many years directed philanthropic support to a wide range of causes and programs at ASU with one unifying motive: to improve the lives of others. Read more

Webb images reveal interstellar discovery

Arizona State University astronomers are sharing one of their first and most beautiful NASA James Webb Space Telescope images of a galaxy pair at a distance of about 700 million light-years away from us. 

Using Webb’s new images and data, the scientists were able to trace the light that was emitted by the bright white elliptical galaxy through the winding spiral galaxy in front of it, allowing astronomers to identify the effects of interstellar dust in the spiral galaxy. Read more

ASU Assistant Profesor Daniel Jacobs selected for prestigious NSF CAREER award

The NSF CAREER program is a foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department. Read more

Record broken: Hubble Space Telescope spots farthest star ever seen

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the universe's birth in the Big Bang — the farthest individual star ever seen to date. Read more or watch a video about this discovery.

ASU astronomer finds star fuel surrounding galaxies

Most galaxies, including our own, grow by accumulating new material and turning them into stars — that much is known. What has been unknown is where that new material comes from and how it flows into galaxies to create stars. Read more

New center launches with focus on early stars and galaxies

A new center at Arizona State University aims to help us better understand the history of early stars, galaxies and black holes to enhance our knowledge of the universe. The Beus Center for Cosmic Foundations was founded in the School of Earth and Space Exploration through a generous gift by philanthropists Leo and Annette Beus. Read more

ASU prepares for launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built. It is expected to launch from the European Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana, no earlier than Saturday, Dec. 25, at 5:20 a.m. Mountain Time on the Ariane 5 rocket. Its destination is an orbit around the Sun-Earth second Lagrange point.  Read more

Dusting for fingerprints of the first stars in the universe

Long ago, about 400,000 years after the beginning of the universe —the Big Bang — the universe was dark. There were no stars or galaxies, and the universe was filled primarily with neutral hydrogen gas.

Then, for the next 50 million-100 million years, gravity slowly pulled the densest regions of gas together until they collapsed in some places to form the first stars. Read more

ASU’s ‘starbirth’ research a top 10 ‘Breakthrough of the Year’

A key discovery on the birth of stars and unexpected conditions in the early universe by Arizona State University cosmologist Judd Bowman and his research team has been chosen by the U.K.-based publication Physics World as one of its top 10 "Breakthroughs of the Year." Read more