Astronomy
is often called the oldest science -- in many ways, it is also one of the
newest! Our business is the physical study of stars and stellar systems in
the observable universe, what might more properly be called astrophysics.
Because astronomers really can't experiment on stars, experimentalists are
called observers instead. They supply the observational details of
positions, fluxes, and spectra to theoreticians, who model the evolution and
development of objects ranging fromcomets
to stars to entire galaxies. Scientists who study the surfaces of planets
are more typically found in geology programs,
while scientists who specialize in the study of upper atmospheres and magnetospheres
of planets, and the regions between the planets, are generally housed in space
physics groups.
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The University of Kansas Astronomy Group includes three full-time faculty astronomers (Stephen J. Shawl, Barbara J. Anthony-Twarog, and Bruce Twarog), and three adjunct faculty (Scott Baird - Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Benedictine College, Atchison, Keith Ashman- assistant professor in the Physics Department at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and Karen Camarda, assistant professor in the Physics Department at Washburn University in Topeka). The ongoing research at KU deals with the observation and intrepretation of single stars and clusters, both within the Milky Way and in nearby galaxies. Among the researchers, use is made of the facilities of the Hubble Space Telescope , Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory, two federally funded observatories operated in the northern and southern hemispheres of the Americas, Steward Observatory in Arizona and NURO, the National Undergraduate Research Observatory. We also have used the International Ultraviolet Explorer, a satellite observatory operated by NASA and the European Space Agency. Our studies are designed to probe the detailed evolution of single stars through their ultraviolet spectra and the polarization of their light scattered from the material in the circumstellar environment of cool stars, the origin and evolution of star clusters through CCD photometric analysis using intermediate-band filters, and the origin and evolution of the Milky Way from study of the oldest field star populations and clusters. Future observational research will include 40% of the available telescope time using the ULTRA 1-m telescope under construction at Mt. Laguna Observatory, in collaboration with San Diego State University.
In addition to the astronomy group at KU, there are two active research groups in related areas. Drs. Hume Feldman, Adrian Melott, and Sergei Shandarin comprise the Cosmology research group, which attempts to understand the large-scale structure of the Universe through computer modelling and comparisons between simulations and the results from ongoing extragalactic surveys. Dr. Tom Cravens and Prof. Emeritus Tom Armstrong use NASA support and collaborations to study the plasma physics of the solar system as represented by a mixture of cometary and planetary objects. A recent addition to the astrophysics group in the area of plasma astrophysics is Dr. Misha Medvedev, who joined the department as an assistant professor in Fall 2002.