Martha P. Haynes, the Goldwin Smith Professor of astronomy, has earned many awards in her 37-year career at Cornell, an article on the Cornell Research website points out. She even has an asteroid named after her. But what excites her the most these days is the new, groundbreaking telescope she will be leaving behind for the next generation of researchers: the Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope-prime (CCAT-prime), the six-meter (20 feet) diameter telescope situated at 18,400 feet in the Atacama Desert of Chile.
“CCAT-prime is a state-of-the-art frontier telescope that will be unique because of its high site and its very precise mirror,” Haynes explains in the article. “It is designed to observe at short wavelengths—about a third of a millimeter to two millimeters—that are hard to observe on Earth because water vapor molecules in the atmosphere absorb these photons and block them from reaching the ground.”
Serge Petchenyi/Cornell University
From left, Xi Yang, PhD '10, senior lecturer of finance in the SC Johnson College of Business; Christine Ye; Christine Ye Award recipient Margaret E. Foster, doctoral candidate in communication; Cornelia Ye Award recipient Naman Agrawal, doctoral candidate in neurobiology and behavior; Cornelia Ye; and Derina Samuel, associate director of graduate student development at the Center for Teaching Innovation.
NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Artist concept of the gas giant planet WD 1856 b orbiting a white dwarf star. The planet is 7 times larger than the Earth-sized white dwarf it orbits. WD 1856 b has methane and hazes in its atmosphere, which would give it a similar color to Saturn's moon Titan. The white dwarf formed from a star that died 5 billion years ago, and has been cooling ever since, giving it an orange colour similar to the Sun.
