Professor and DEO Greg Howes explains the spectacular auroras that lit up Iowa on November 11 — why they happen, why they were visible so far south and what they tell us about the effects of space weather here on Earth.

The solar storm that impacted Earth on Tuesday, November 11 brought a display of northern and southern lights that dazzled onlookers in latitudes as far south as Texas and Arizona. In eastern Iowa, we were lucky to get completely clear skies and an auroral show that started early enough in the evening that many locals were able to watch and document the sky. In this article, Allison Jaynes explains auroras and geomagnetic storms.

University of Iowa Assistant Professor David Nataf will lead a NASA-funded research project focused on producing detailed three-dimensional maps for the study of exoplanets and their host stars.

UI physics and astronomy professor Allison Jaynes offered a few tips for how best to view the Northern Lights.

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