A Stellar Evening at the UW Planetarium

June 18, 2024 | Nikolina Horvat

Last Wednesday, on June 12, 2024, the UW planetarium became the epicenter of excitement and discovery, DiRAC hosted an event that left attendees starry-eyed and inspired. The evening was filled with captivating presentations about current and anticipated discoveries with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory which is currently in the last phase of the construction in […]

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Huge Survey vs. Tiny Space Junk

June 3, 2024 | AAS Nova

As construction continues on the Vera Rubin Observatory, the skies above its mountaintop home grow more and more crowded following every rocket launch. Astronomers, conscious of the plans for mega-constellations of new satellites in the next few years, are rightfully worried: will these satellites and the tiny bits of debris that come with every deployment […]

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Stars and satellites as seen by the Dark Energy Camera

Lucy in the Sky with Debris

May 31, 2024 |

Earlier this year, DiRAC Fellows Meredith Rawls, Dino Bektešević, and Colin Orion Chandler contributed interviews and satellite-streaked telescope images to an interdisciplinary research and visual art project on the visibility of orbital debris by artist Isabella Ong and curator Seet Yun Teng. The project included an exhibition during April 2024 in Singapore. Isabella originally reached […]

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Poster for Lucy in the Sky with Debris

Algorithms pioneered at DiRAC help Asteroid Institute and Google Identify 27,500 New Asteroids

April 30, 2024 | DiRAC News

The Solar System group at the DiRAC Institute at the University of Washington has dedicated efforts to advancing asteroid and comet discovery algorithms for large datasets and next generation surveys. Our enduring partnership with the Asteroid Institute has yielded significant progress, resulting in the development of a novel algorithm known as Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery […]

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Husky Giving Day 2024: Support astronomy students today!

March 25, 2024 |

Your contribution on Husky Giving Day (HGD) is a catalyst for a student-centered initiative led by DiRAC and the Department of Astronomy!  Make a gift today! Join us in our mission to achieve 20 gifts before April 4th and unlock a $10,000 challenge. Every contribution, regardless of the amount, brings us closer to our goal. […]

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