News
School of Physics and Astronomy

RIT’s Launch Initiative won first place in the Space Dynamics Laboratory Payload Challenge this summer in Las Cruces, N.M. They were among nearly 6,000 students from 159 international collegiate teams at the annual competition that challenges students to launch solid, liquid, or hybrid rockets to altitudes of 10,000 and 30,000 feet.

Joel Kastner, a professor in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and School of Physics and Astronomy, and a team of researchers with the European Southern Observatory have discovered new evidence of how planets as massive as Jupiter can form.

Michael Richmond, professor of astronomy and physics, explains the 1969 moon landing for the "Curious Kids" series published by The Conversation.

The Washington Post talks to Jeyhan Kartaltepe, associate professor in RIT's School of Physics and Astronomy, and Rebecca Larson, postdoctoral research associate in RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy, about images from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Mashable mentions Rebecca Larson, postdoctoral research associate in RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy.

An RIT postdoctoral researcher and an associate professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, along with a team behind the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, have used new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope to confirm the existence of the most distant active supermassive black hole ever found.

Business Insider talks to Manuela Campanelli, professor in the College of Science and director of Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation, about the latest gravitational-wave signal observations.

Astrophysicists using large radio telescopes to observe a collection of cosmic clocks in our galaxy have found evidence for gravitational waves that oscillate with periods of years to decades, according to a set of papers published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

In collaboration with NASA, RIT unveiled a website asking for volunteers to join an effort to take critical measurements that will aid astronomers in identifying the “fingerprints” of different chemical elements present in galaxies and measuring their distances.

Four RIT faculty members are opening up soft matter physics, sometimes known as “squishy physics,” to a new generation of diverse scholars. Moumita Das, Poornima Padmanabhan, Shima Parsa, and Lishibanya Mohapatra are helping RIT make its mark in the field.

Associate Professor Jeyhan Kartaltepe has her hands full studying data from the most powerful observational instrument ever made, while continuing to bolster her reputation as a teacher and mentor. Her work has gotten the attention of the astronomy community worldwide.

RIT will confer a record 69 Ph.D. degrees during commencement May 12, marking a 53 percent increase from last year.