Astronomer Jeffrey Kenney '80 discusses galactic clusters.

Jeffrey Kenney ’80, an astronomy professor at Yale University, visits campus to discuss interactions within galactic clusters at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in Carnegie Science Hall, Room 204, 44 Campus Ave.

The talk, titled The Fate of Galaxies in Clusters, is intended for a mainstream audience and is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6490.

Clusters are the harshest environments for galaxies, and in clusters galaxies undergo many processes that change them. Some are changed by gravitational disturbances including collisions or mergers, whereas others have their star-forming gas stripped out from the stars, leaving “dead” spiral galaxies.

Focusing on disturbances in the Virgo cluster, which consists of 1,300-2,000 galaxies and is the nearest to Earth, Kenney will explain how scientists determine which processes have acted on the galaxies and how they interpret the consequences of these interactions for galactic evolution.

In his research, Kenney explores trends in cluster interactions through targeted studies of individual galaxies, using data from ground- and space-based telescopes, including the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes.

Kenney graduated from Bates in 1980 with a degree in physics and earned his doctorate in astrophysics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1987. He joined Yale’s faculty in 1991 and chaired the astronomy department from 2005 to this year.

Interviewed for the story, Clough tells NASA writer Cynthia O’Carroll how he met Petro.

“I was substituting for another faculty member and decided to discuss the geology of the moon,” Clough recalls. “Noah introduced himself as being an enthusiastic fan of space exploration with plans to major in geology. That day we began a conversation about the geology of the moon that never stopped.”

During his time at Bates, Petro did a summer internship through NASA’s Planetary Geology and Geophysics Undergraduate Research Program and worked with the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz. He also was also active in the Lewiston-Auburn community, teaching children and adults about the glacial “stories” that can be read from the rock formations on the Androscoggin River’s Great Falls.

• Also, view a video of Lundblad talking about his research on the behavior of atoms at near absolute zero that won a competitive $388,000 Department of Defense grant.

Assistant Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad is the first member of the Bates College faculty to receive a Defense Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the grant is for $388,088 over three years. It will fund Lundblad’s research into atomic activity at ultralow temperatures. Bates is the only liberal arts school in the nation and the only academic institution in Maine to receive a DEPSCoR grant this year.

It’s well-established that certain materials become extremely efficient electrical conductors — superconductors — when cooled well below freezing. But why particular materials behave this way at such temperatures, potentially suitable for practical application, isn’t clear. Lundblad hopes to better understand this phenomenon by taking it to the extreme: He will study the subatomic behavior of matter when cooled to about 100 billionths of a degree above the temperature, roughly 460 degrees below zero, where atomic motion ceases — absolute zero.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lundblad plans to observe a sample of ultracold gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate. At such low temperatures, the locations of the gas atoms become fundamentally indistinguishable. With the gas confined in a vacuum chamber, he will use laser beams to create “optical lattice traps” that simulate the complicated behavior of electrons in high-temperature superconductors.

But the simulation will be “cleaner,” or subject to fewer variables, than its crystalline high-temperature counterparts. The hope is that the gas particles’ behavior at near absolute zero will shed light on particle behavior in crystalline high-temperature situations.

While any applications of the research won’t come for quite a long time, the work could support important technological advances. “An electrical grid made of a high-temperature superconductor, for example, could be immensely cheaper than our current system,” he says. Timekeeping and other measurement systems could also benefit.

Any military applications, Lundblad adds, would be nonspecific and on a long time scale. “I like to think of ultracold atoms as a field similar to the laser in the 1960s — a hotbed of research, but nobody knew quite what to do with them yet.”

The Department of Defense takes the long view, he explains. “Similar to its funding of research related to creating the Internet, they figure that spending research dollars advances the cause of the country in general, and if they reap some technological benefit 30 years down the line, so be it.”

Learn more.

Astronomer R. Bruce Partridge visits Bates College to give a lecture titled Photographing the Big Bang at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 10, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Avenue.

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. Partridge is presented by the Department of Physics and Astronomy in a visit supported by the Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureships Endowment Fund and the American Astronomical Society. For more information, please call 207-786-6325.

Partridge is the Bettye and Howard Marshall Professor of Natural Sciences at Haverford College, Haverford, Pa. His research focuses on cosmic microwave background radiation, galaxy formation, radio astronomy and cosmology. He is the author of some 150 articles and the book 3K: The Cosmic Microwave Background (Cambridge University Press, 1995), and contributed to the book Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium (National Academy Press, 2001).

At Haverford, Partridge teaches physics and astronomy courses at the advanced and survey levels, reflecting a strong interest in teaching technical subjects to non-specialists.

Originally from Hawaii, Partridge received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his doctorate from Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He received Fulbright Scholarships to study in Uruguay and Norway in the 1970s and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1988 and 1989.

Partridge was an instructor at Oxford and Princeton before going to Haverford as an assistant professor in 1970. He has since also served as dean of the college and provost there. He received the Christian and Mary Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and was named Marshall Professor of the Natural Sciences in 1982.

Partridge gives his lecture during a four-day visit to Bates.

The Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureships in Astronomy, sponsored by the American Astronomical Society, celebrate the achievements of Harlow Shapley, whose research disproved the theory that our sun has a central position in the Milky Way. Shapley was a renowned public lecturer and educator, and a lifelong member of the American Astronomical Society.

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. Partridge is presented by the Department of Physics and Astronomy in a visit supported by the Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureships Endowment Fund and the American Astronomical Society. For more information, please call 207-786-6325.

Partridge is the Bettye and Howard Marshall Professor of Natural Sciences at Haverford College, Haverford, Pa. His research focuses on cosmic microwave background radiation, galaxy formation, radio astronomy and cosmology. He is the author of some 150 articles and the book 3K: The Cosmic Microwave Background (Cambridge University Press, 1995), and contributed to the book Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium (National Academy Press, 2001).

At Haverford, Partridge teaches physics and astronomy courses at the advanced and survey levels, reflecting a strong interest in teaching technical subjects to non-specialists.

Originally from Hawaii, Partridge received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his doctorate from Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He received Fulbright Scholarships to study in Uruguay and Norway in the 1970s and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1988 and 1989.

Partridge was an instructor at Oxford and Princeton before going to Haverford as an assistant professor in 1970. He has since also served as dean of the college and provost there. He received the Christian and Mary Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and was named Marshall Professor of the Natural Sciences in 1982.

Partridge gives his lecture during a four-day visit to Bates.

The Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureships in Astronomy, sponsored by the American Astronomical Society, celebrate the achievements of Harlow Shapley, whose research disproved the theory that our sun has a central position in the Milky Way. Shapley was a renowned public lecturer and educator, and a lifelong member of the American Astronomical Society.

“It’s thrilling to shout across the room ‘I’ve got one!’ when you spot the first supernova during an observing run,” said Soderberg, a math-physics major who was on leave from Bates to participate in the NSF’s Research Experience for Undergraduates program.

As part of a team of astrophysicists working in Hawaii and at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, Soderberg used the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope and the Keck Observatory, both on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to make the discovery.

Identifying supernovae is a process of elimination. The CFH Telescope takes two digital pictures of the sky three weeks apart. Soderberg compared the two pictures to identify “residuals,” light objects that changed brightness. Based on her knowledge of luminous astronomical objects, Soderberg then distinguished the residuals from other objects in view, such as variable stars, asteroids and active galactic nuclei. She and her team then confirmed her supernovae identifications with the low-resolution spectrograph on the Keck Telescope.

Since research time at large observatories is strictly scheduled, Soderberg’s recommendations on what to look for with the Keck Telescope were key to the discovery. “With research time at the Keck Observatory so limited, you want to make sure that you don’t waste four hours looking for dust,” she said.

The team launched its search for supernovae — bright, dying stars located billions of light years from Earth — in the hope that measuring the light from these stars can help determine whether the expansion of the universe is accelerating or decelerating. Preliminary results imply that the universe is accelerating, not slowing down.

Considering all that could have gone wrong, Soderberg says she felt “tremendous relief” at the discovery of so many supernovae. Bad weather and software glitches routinely upset the best-laid research plans. Working on the project via the Internet with colleagues collecting data across time zones meant “stress, little sleep and lots of junk food,” Soderberg said.

“Discovering supernovae requires one to remain organized and focused for several 20-hour workdays in a row, something Alicia can do as well as any of the team’s scientists,” said Brian Schmidt, astronomer at Australia’s Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring observatories and lead investigator of the supernova discovery team. “Very few students are given opportunities like this. Alicia has made the most of them by proving herself a hard worker, finding her own funding and asking the right questions of the right people.”

With encouragement from Eric Wollman, professor of physics at Bates, Soderberg received her first NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates grant to study at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics after her sophomore year at Bates, in summer 1997.

Soderberg stayed at Harvard during the first semester of her junior year, studying astrophysics and becoming a resident expert on the computer software used to help identify supernovae. She spent the second semester of her junior year at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile developing a short list of possible supernovae to find with the low-resolution spectrograph at the Keck Observatory.

Soderberg’s research will culminate in a Bates honors thesis, but she doesn’t get starry eyed about just supernovae. She also has studied binary stars in globular clusters from Arizona’s Kitt Peak National Observatory and looked for the existence of water in central-belt asteroids from Cornell University’s Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Before returning to Bates for the second semester of her senior year, she received another grant — this one from the U.S. Department of Energy — to study gamma ray bursts at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Soderberg, a graduate of Falmouth High School, is the daughter of Jon and Nancy Soderberg, 726 Old Barnstable Road, Mashpee.