Astronomy & Astrophysics

The 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held January 12-16, 2025 in National Harbor, Maryland, made history as the largest astronomy meeting ever convened. Nearly 3,700 astronomers, exhibitors, educators, and journalists attended, and nearly 500 undergraduate and graduate students from around the country competed in the Chambliss poster competition.

Meghan Sedberry, a UNC Asheville Math major and Astronomy minor, was one of 20 undergraduate students honored with a Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Award for her research presentation at the meeting. Sedberry’s poster presented initial results from a new survey of absorption lines tracing the gaseous halos of distant galaxies, which were detected in an analysis of nearly 13,000 quasar spectra from the Early Data Release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey. Sedberry’s work compiling and refining this catalog of gas clouds in ~30,000 distant galaxies will enable a better understanding of how gas cycles shape galaxy evolution across billions of years of cosmic history.

Sedberry’s research has been carried out in collaboration with UNC Asheville astronomer Prof. Britt Lundgren and recent UNC Asheville graduate Solomon McDonald (B.S. Computer Science 2023), who presented initial results from the DESI quasar analysis at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Madison, Wisconsin in June 2024.

UNC Asheville Physics major and Astronomy minor Will Kinley also presented a poster at AAS 245 on his research modeling coronal mass ejections in extrasolar systems. This work can provide insight into the habitability of exoplanets in systems with active stars. Kinley was recently awarded a prestigious 2024-2025 North Carolina Space Grant Undergraduate Research Scholarship and has undertaken this research with UNC Asheville astronomer Prof. Christene Lynch.

Two recent UNC Asheville alumni could also be found presenting research in National Harbor. Sam Creech (B.S. Physics/Math/Astronomy ’20), now a PhD candidate at the University of Utah, presented her research using space telescopes to quantify the contributions of active galactic nuclei to the cosmic X-ray background. Creech was recently awarded a 2024 NASA FINESST Graduate Fellowship to support this work, undertaken in collaboration with Prof. Dan Wik at the University of Utah and Dr. Francesca Civano, a Physics of the Cosmos chief scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Daniel Fistos (B.S. Physics/Math/Astronomy ’24) presented his post-baccalaureate research using Hubble Space Telescope observations to correlate the dark matter mass of galaxy clusters with observations of intracluster light. Fistos’ research has been undertaken at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, with STScI Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Amanda Pagul.

The meeting also featured a talk by Dr. Zack Hutchens, who recently joined the faculty at UNC Asheville as a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow. Hutchens presented his thesis work, studying the gas in galaxy groups, which he completed in 2024 at UNC Chapel Hill with advisor Prof. Sheila Kannappan.

A great time was had by all, and we hope to continue to grow our annual UNC Asheville astronomers group lunch at future AAS meetings!

A new grant is enabling a global team of scientists access to hundreds of hours of observing time with the James Webb Space Telescope. The grant’s primary investigator for the U.S. team, UNC Asheville Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy David Wake, is leading the way in this single largest project to ever take place using Webb, through a process called pure parallel observation. The data will provide detailed observations for an unprecedented number of galaxies in the distant universe. Dr. Zackary Hutchens, who recently joined the faculty at UNC Asheville as a postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow, is contributing to the scientific analysis. As the project progresses, UNC Asheville students will have the opportunity to become involved, as well, giving them the chance to use exciting new data in their research. 

Read more about the project here.