Critical to the proper execution of all programs at the Greater IPAC is a staff of active researchers who can guide the development of those tasks and subsequently assist other astronomers in using the final products. These pages are intended to highlight our research activities and provide links to local and global resources, in the hope of improving visibility and encouraging collaborations both within IPAC and with the science community at large.

Research in the News New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that galaxies prefer to raise stars in cosmic suburbia rather than in "big cities." Like big cities on Earth, galaxy clusters are scattered throughout the universe, connected by a web of dusty "highways" called filaments. For the first time, Spitzer's supersensitive eyes have caught an infrared glimpse of several galaxies traveling along two filamentary roads into a galaxy cluster called Abell 1763. + Learn More

Billions of years ago, small galaxies across the universe regularly collided -- forcing the gas, dust, stars, and black holes within them to unite. The clashing of galactic gases was so powerful it ignited star formation, while fusing central black holes developed an insatiable appetite for gas and dust. Astronomers have long suspected that these merging structures would eventually grow into some of the most massive galaxies in our universe. Now, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has finally identified several of these transitional, or "teenage," galaxies for further study. + Learn More

Astronomers have at last found definitive evidence that the universe's first dust -- the celestial stuff that seeded future generations of stars and planets -- was forged in the explosions of massive stars. The findings, made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, are the most significant clue yet in the longstanding mystery of where the dust in our very young universe came from. Scientists had suspected that exploding stars, or supernovae, were the primary source, but nobody had been able to demonstrate that they can create copious amounts of dust -- until now. Spitzer's sensitive infrared detectors have found 10,000 Earth masses worth of dust in the blown-out remains of the well-known supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. + Learn More

Announcements Decadal Survey 2010 information and updates NASA announces 2009 Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellows