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Graduate students Kirk Long and Constanza Echiburú‑Trujillo have been awarded the 2026 Richard Nelson Thomas Award, an honor rooted in JILA’s astronomy tradition that recognizes outstanding experimental contributions by graduate students. Drake Miller III and Sajal Gupta were also nominated, underscoring the depth of student research across the institute.

JILA graduate student Tatsuya Akiba, a Ph.D. candidate in the Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences department at the University of Colorado Boulder, has received the prestigious 2024 Richard Nelson Thomas Award. This honor is bestowed annually to an outstanding APS graduate student at JILA and recognizes excellence in research and academic achievements.

Dead stars known as white dwarfs, have a mass like the Sun while being similar in size to Earth. They are common in our galaxy, as 97% of stars are white dwarfs. As stars reach the end of their lives, their cores collapse into the dense ball of a white dwarf, making our galaxy seem like an ethereal graveyard.

Despite their prevalence, the chemical makeup of these stellar remnants has been a conundrum for astronomers for years. The presence of heavy metal elements—like silicon, magnesium, and calcium—on the surface of many of these compact objects is a perplexing discovery that defies our expectations of stellar behavior.

When it comes to inspiring young people to pursue a career within the sciences, you can't start too early. At least, that's what the JILA Excellence in Diversity and Inclusivity (JEDI) group believed when they collaborated with the Colorado non-profit organization Pretty Brainy to develop a speaker series. The series, designed for girls from ages 11 and up, featured the voices of several women JILAns, all focusing on their work and giving tools for success to this younger generation. Over the course of 8 weeks, women of all ages could virtually tune in to hear some of the brightest female minds from JILA discuss the importance of mentorship, perseverance, failure, and of course, some of the newest findings within physics.

When two galaxies collide, the supermassive black holes at their cores release a devastating gravitational “kick,” similar to the recoil from a shotgun. New research led by ���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ suggests that this kick may be so powerful it can knock millions of stars into wonky orbits. The research, published Oct. 29 in��The Astrophysical Journal Letters, helps solve a decades-old mystery surrounding a strangely-shaped cluster of stars at the heart of the Andromeda Galaxy. It might also help researchers better understand the process of how galaxies grow by feeding on each other.

When it comes to galaxies in our universe, there is still much work to do. Part of this work is being done by JILA Fellow and Assistant Professor of Astrophysics, Ann-Marie Madigan, and postdoc Dr. Angela Collier. In a�� paper recently published in The Astrophysical Journal, Collier and Madigan postulate that the evolution of a galaxy can be affected by dark matter interacting with the stars within the galaxy. Galaxies evolve over billions of years, changing shape, speed of rotation, and other factors. Studying what affects galaxy evolution is important in answering questions��about the foundation of our universe, of how stars and planets are formed, and the origins of dark matter.

���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ astrophysicist Ann-Marie Madigan has taken home a prestigious prize in recognition of her research exploring the dynamics of objects in space—from stars circling black holes to icy dwarf planets in the outer solar system.

The Richard Nelson Thomas Award was established by the friends and family of R.N. "Dick" Thomas to provide an annual award to the year's most outstanding graduate student in astrophysics.��Each year, the JILA astrophysical faculty nominates outstanding students and vote to determine the recipient of the award.

Within our solar system are icy planetary bodies that do not orbit the Sun. Astrophysicists want to understand why these orbital anomalies exist. Two recent studies by JILA Fellow Ann Marie Madigan's group suggest that these detached objects have steadily nudged themselves out of solar orbit over millions of years. Using supercomputers, the Madigan Group can test their theory of collective gravity.

While we've known for a while that black holes could rip stars apart, we don’t know why these events occur so��frequently. Now, a model by JILA researchers explaining this discrepancy is shown to be promising after passing its first reality test.