Carleton College Physics and Astronomy

10/03/2024

The Clinton B. Ford Observatory, an historic amateur observatory once used for variable star observations, has fallen to wildfires.

04/10/2023

The universe is so complicated even the slightest things that might go unnoticed could have profound implications. This happened when the Hubble Space Telescope serendipitously photographed a curious linear feature out in space that is so unusual it was first dismissed as an imaging artifact from Hubble’s cameras. But follow-up spectroscopic observations reveal it is a 200,000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars.

The supermassive black hole that lies at the tip of the bridge was ejected from a colliding galaxy after a tussle with two other supermassive black holes. It compressed gas in its wake to spawn star formation and leave a long trail of young blue stars: https://bit.ly/3JTk7Ma

03/28/2023

Keep an eye to the sky this week for a chance to see a planetary hangout.

02/18/2023

11/12/2022

Melissa Eblen-Zayas recently published a paper about dealing with student mental health in the classroom .

In response to widespread concerns about student mental health, a growing movement in higher education is focused on fostering student well-being as an important element of student success. Thrivin...

11/03/2022

Arjendu Pattanayak, professor of physics, recently spoke about, "Extreme parametric sensitivity in open quantum systems: From photobiochemistry to the Rabi model," at the Southwest Quantum Information and Technology workshop about work done with research associate Arie Kapulkin and collaborators from the University of Toronto. Students Maya Khesin ’24 and Osip Surdovitch ’23 also attended to present a poster on "Finite efficiency measurements and quantum back-action control of chaos," featuring work done with Arjendu, Sacha Greenfield ’19 and Yusuf Ismail ’23, which was partially supported by Carleton's Towsley funds.

08/12/2022

06/10/2022

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced the minor planet (22022) Gould in a recent bulletin.

05/16/2022

Last night's eclipse was gorgeous! There were a couple hundred Carls who stopped by the observatory to take a look through one of four telescopes set up.

Photo by Mason Fields

05/12/2022

Goooooo Marty!

First panel of the day is live now!!

05/07/2022

Physics major Zev organized a unicycle jousting event