News

An article on the effect of a total solar eclipse on the terrestrial atmosphere, by visiting scholar Prof. Marcos Peñaloza-Murillo (from Venezuela) and Prof. Jay Pasachoff has been accepted by the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.  Ross Yu ’19 is writing his senior thesis on similar effects from the 2017 total solar eclipse. which was observed

The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy has welcomed the Keck consortium as an institutional member.  AURA, a consortium of US institutions and international affiliates, operates world-class astronomical observatories in Arizona, Hawaii and Chile on behalf of NASA and the NSF.  Many KNAC faculty, including astronomers at Williams, have used AURA facilities over their

We are delighted to announce the appointment of two new faculty members: Dr. Anne Jaskot, ‘08, as Assistant Professor of Astronomy; and Dr. Kevin Flaherty as Lecturer and Observatory Supervisor. Dr. Flaherty will join us this coming summer, while Dr. Jaskot will complete her Hubble Fellowship at U Mass, before arriving on campus in the

Kerry Hensley ’14, a 4th-year graduate student in astronomy at Boston University, has been selected by the American Astronomical Society as the first ever “AAS Media Fellow.” Her responsibilities include helping to run press conferences at AAS meetings and writing for AAS print and online publications. Congratulations, Kerry!

Though far from the band of totality, our rooftop observatory was host to a crowd of excited eclipse watchers. More than 150 people turned out to view the sun as it was 65% covered by the moon on August 21. Steve Souza, Observatory Supervisor, set up several telescopes, including a “sun funnel” that projected the

New photos of the 7″ Alvan Clark refractor from 1851 (Clark’s first telescope) and a room of the Mehlin Museum of Astronomy below the dome that includes an 1876 Repsold meridian transit, in the original building of the Hopkins Observatory (constructed 1836-8), were taken by Ralph Lieberman as part of the architecture-at-Williams book project by

The eight students chose for the expedition to the August 21 Solar Eclipse are: Erin Meadors ’20 Ross Yu ’19 Christian Lockwood ’20 Charles Ide ’20 Connor Marti ’20 Declan Daly ’20 Cielo Perez ’19 Brendan Rosseau ’19 funding: NSF; National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration; NASA Massachusetts Space Grant; Williams College Science Division;

Current students and alumni at American Astronomical Society meeting, Grapevine, TX

Terry-Ann’s geosciences thesis at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, was on diamond-anvil measurements of the metal-silicate partitioning behaviours of siderophile and volatile elements at the conditions of the deep primitive Earth, to provide constraints on the mechanisms of terrestrial core formation. David Ticehurst’s physics thesis at U. North Carolina was “An Investigation