News

Dunlap Fellow Dr. Ziggy Pleunis has been awarded a prestigious Veni fellowship from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to support his work on the detection and characterization of fast radio bursts. Designed for scientists who have recently obtained their PhDs, the grant fuels three years of independent research at a Dutch university or research institute.   […]

Follow Quebec-born, Innu astrophysicist Dr. Laurie Rousseau-Nepton as she studies the cosmos from atop Hawai\’i’s Maunakea volcano. North Star, a five-part documentary series that premiered on August 21, 2023, chronicles Dr. Laurie Rousseau-Nepton\’s fascinating journey as a resident astronomer at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Rousseau-Nepton is a Quebec-born Innu astrophysicist and the first Indigenous woman in

An international collaboration of over 170 scientists published the first evidence for the presence of low-frequency gravitational waves humming throughout our universe—including one recent member of the Dunlap Institute.  Dr. Cherry Ng came to the Dunlap Institute in 2017 as a SOSCIP TalentEdge Fellow and Research Associate. A couple years earlier, Ng joined the North American Nanohertz

  By Leighton Kitson, Durham University, with notes from Meaghan MacSween, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto   Astronomers have successfully launched a balloon-borne telescope that has begun capturing images of the Universe on its first flight above the Earth’s atmosphere.  The Super Pressure Balloon-Borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) was flown to the edge

  On April 8, 2024, the moon will pass in front of the Sun and cast its ethereal shadow onto millions of Canadians. We have one year to prepare for this once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse! Now is the time to consider where you will be on April 8, 2024, if you will travel to view

  By Meaghan MacSween, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto     University of Toronto PhD student Amanda Cook has found a way to use bright signals coming from across the Universe to weigh the atmosphere of the Milky Way galaxy.  The radio signals she used come from the astronomical phenomenon known as

  By David Goldberg, A&S News The Trottier Family Foundation is partnering with Arts & Science to ensure thousands of Canadian children can view the upcoming total solar eclipse safely. An impactful gift of $240,000 from the foundation will help fund Eyes to the Sky: Elevating Astronomy Education in Canada. The initiative is a joint effort

  By Meaghan MacSween, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto   University of Toronto Assistant Professor Maria Drout has been awarded a 2023 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics for her contribution to our understanding of the evolution, influence, and ultimate fate of massive stars. Drout is an Assistant Professor in

  By Meaghan MacSween, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto  Are we alone in the universe?  Scientists may have just moved us closer to answering this question. The team – led by researchers from the University of Toronto – has streamlined the search for extraterrestrial life by using a new algorithm to

  By Chris Sasaki, Arts and Science News Professor of astrostatistics Joshua Speagle, from the Faculty of Arts & Science’s David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Department of Statistics has won the prestigious Polanyi Prize in physics. The Polanyi Prize is awarded each year to as many as five researchers from