David Nataf, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been awarded funding from NASA to create an interstellar map that could lead to more accurate observations of planets located outside our solar system — known as exoplanets — and their host stars.

Christian Hansen's photo of the TRACERS mission launch won first place in the faculty/staff/researcher category of the Capture Your Research! Photo Competition. Sponsored by NEXUS | Artineers and the Lichtenberger Engineering Library at the University of Iowa, Capture Your Research! is an image competition where students, faculty, and staff submit one image that captures the essence of their research.

Dr. Ken Gayley, an astronomy professor at the University of Iowa, joins LiveNOW’s Austin Westfall to answer questions about the online conspiracies that suggest 3I/ATLAS might be an artificial object or even a probe from another civilization. Gayley emphasizes that objects like 3I/ATLAS are likely natural, formed in different star systems under circumstances we don’t yet understand.

The CLAS Grant Support Office (GSO) is pleased to welcome Kimberly Gray as our new post-award grant manager for the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the college’s top department for external grants and contracts. The Department of Physics and Astronomy boasts a research portfolio of $27 million in fiscal year 2025.

In a segment on LiveNow from Fox News, Professor Ken Gayley helped debunk moon landing conspiracy theories.

The following members of the department have photos that you can vote for: Christian Hansen (TRACERS, Dr. Craig Kletzing's Legacy); David Miles (Last Look at the TRACERS Satellites on Earth); Shirsh Soni (The Smiling Sun: When the Star Showed Its Joy). Voting Closes October 30th

Four University of Iowa students have been named Iowa Space Grant Consortium (ISGC) Undergraduate Research Scholars for the 2025-2026 academic year. Eight outstanding undergraduate students across the state were awarded this honor to pursue STEM research projects that align with NASA’s mission.

A recent article by Associate Professor Allison Jaynes, "Understanding the plasma processes connecting the solar system," was featured in Scilights, which showcases the most interesting research across the physical sciences published in AIP Publishing Journals.

Thomas Folland, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, examined how microstructures made from silicon carbide can be used to develop sensors that improve safety in industrial settings and create more effective thermal imaging technologies.

A NASA-sponsored team at the University of Iowa is restoring and advancing the nation’s capability to make high-fidelity magnetic field measurements needed to investigate space weather that can impact our communication and power grids on Earth and our assets in space. The UI team, led by Dr. David Miles, has developed a new fluxgate magnetometer core to be used in the Space Weather Iowa Magnetometer (SWIM).