For the last 15 years, the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center has been using radio telescopes supported by the National Science Foundation— including those operated by NSF’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory— to turn a suite of millisecond pulsars into a galaxy-scale gravitational-wave detector.
Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the protoplanetary disk around a young star have discovered the most compelling chemical evidence to date of the formation of protoplanets. The discovery will provide astronomers with an alternate method for detecting and characterizing protoplanets when direct observations or imaging are not possible.
While studying classical novae using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a graduate researcher uncovered evidence the objects may have been erroneously typecast as simple.
Before 1933, all we knew about the Universe came from observations made through the limited visual region of the electromagnetic spectrum. That all changed in large part thanks to Karl Jansky.