Media Coverage of VIDA Researchers and Activities
Vanderbilt astronomers participate in new search for dark energy
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Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge Program receives $3.7 million to increase minority PhDs
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Finding that 'identical twin' stars not always the same featured in Nature's Making the Paper
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Discovery of dissimilar 'identical twin' stars featured by National Science Foundation
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VIDA's KELT telescope project mines the southern sky for exoplanets
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Holley-Bockelmann's research featured in National Geographic A pair of artist's conceptions shows the disk of material around the binary star system WZ Sge, which consists of a white dwarf pulling material from a cooler companion. According to a previous model (left), the disk contained only visible material. But new findings suggest the presence of an asymmetric outer disk of dark matter (right). The research is just one of several new findings presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society that are helping to unravel the mysteries of black holes. |
Rising Star: For Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, astronomy is more than a job – it’s a calling Kelly Holley-Bockelmann at Vanderbilt's Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education. In some ways, Kelly Holley-Bockelmann is an unlikely astrophysicist.
For one thing, she’s a woman carving out a career in a male-dominated field. For another, she doesn’t hail from a long line of scientists or scholars.
But the new assistant professor of physics and astronomy has always had an insatiable curiosity about the universe, and her determined pursuit to satisfy it has taken a winding path that ends at Vanderbilt. |
More minority doctorates goal of Vanderbilt-Fisk partnership
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Vanderbilt University, South Africa’s University of Cape Town partner to increase number of black scientists from South AfricaFaculty from Vanderbilt University and South Africa’s University of Cape Town (UCT) met March 4-7, 2007, in Cape Town to discuss how they can work together to recruit and train more black astronomers in South Africa. See also the Vanderbilt—Cape Town Partnership website for more information. |
Vanderbilt Cottrell Scholar to use award for research, minority recruitment
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Eclipsing brown dwarfs provide new key to the star formation processPity the brown dwarf. It’s too large to be a planet, but too small to be a star. Although these “failed stars” are neither fish nor fowl, they play an important role in the cosmic scheme of things. Many astronomers think that they may actually be the most common product of the stellar formation process. So information about brown dwarfs can provide valuable new insights into the dynamic processes that produce stars out of collapsing whirlpools of interstellar dust and gas. |
The Milky Way may hold hundreds of rogue black holesIf the latest simulation of what happens when black holes merge is correct, there could be hundreds of rogue black holes, each weighing several thousand times the mass of the sun, roaming around the Milky Way galaxy. |
Discovery of a rare brown-dwarf eclipsing binary system featured on NPR's Earth & SkyAstronomer Keivan Stassun of Vanderbilt University calls brown dwarfs failed stars. They started out forming as stars do, but they weren’t born with enough mass to ignite and shine as stars. Stassun and colleagues spent 12 years observing two brown dwarfs orbiting each other. |
Astronomer finds sense of place in universe: Interview on NPR's Earth & Sky radio programKeivan Stassun: The questions that we ask, go far beyond our everyday experience and touch on the grandest and oldest and at some sense most deeply philosophical questions that human beings have ever asked. |
The most ambitious attempt yet to trace the history of the universe has seen "first light." The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the 
A unique collaboration between Fisk and Vanderbilt universities that is poised to become the nation’s top source of Ph.D.s in physics and astronomy awarded to underrepresented minorities has received a major boost from three federal grants totaling $3.7 million.
'Identical twin' stars are about as rare as their human counterparts. As the name suggests, these stars are thought to have been born at the same time and been made from the same materials. They are also equal in mass. It was previously assumed that identical twin stars orbiting one another as part of a binary star system were formed under such conditions. But a team led by Keivan Stassun, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has discovered a pair of 'newborn' twin stars that aren't all that identical. The finding indicates that the 'twins' may have been born several hundred thousand years apart.
The analysis of the youngest pair of identical twin stars yet discovered has revealed surprising differences in brightness, surface temperature and possibly even the size of the two. The study, which is 
Vanderbilt astronomers have constructed a special-purpose telescope that will allow them to participate in one of the hottest areas in astronomy – the hunt for earthlike planets circling other stars. The instrument, called the 
How do you increase the number of minority doctorates in the sciences? Astronomy professor Keivan Stassun has one answer. (Video) 
Vanderbilt University astronomy professor Keivan Stassun is one of 13 young scientists named a 2006 Cottrell Scholar, a $100,000 fellowship designed to encourage early-career science researchers who show promise.