University of Maryland at College Park
Department of Astronomy - Planetary Astronomy

Recent Explorations

• cometary astronomy
• planetary rings
• Shoemaker-Levy impact with Jupiter

Like fingerprints left at the scene of a crime, the small bodies remaining from the creation of the solar system--comets, asteroids, interplanetary dust--leave a valuable clue as to what conditions were like when the solar system first formed. The Planetary Group uses both theoretical and observational techniques to understand the origin and evolution of the solar system by studying these small remnants.

Observational research utilizes telescopes at all wavelengths, from the far ultraviolet to the radio regime, including the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Infrared Telescope facility, the BIMA millimeter-wave array, and ground-based telescopes around the world. The theoretical studies include solar system dynamics, ring physics, spectroscopy, and physical processes in comets and asteroids. Much of the group's work is carried out in collaboration with laboratory experiments elsewhere. Members of the group also work with various space missions underway and in development including NEAR (a rendezvous with an asteroid in 1999), Rosetta (a rendezvous with the comet), Ulysses (studying interplanetary space), Galileo (orbiting Jupiter), and several other proposed large orbital telescope missions.

Photo Caption:

Comet Shoemaker-Levy's collision with Jupiter in the summer of 1994 was an unprecedented event in astronomical history, and the faculty, staff and students of the astronomy department played a key role in this event, both scientifically and through communications support. The Small Bodies Node of NASA's Planetary Data System, which is located within the astronomy department, established a mail reflector and bulletin board for coordination of observations. Information and preliminary results were disseminated within minutes to more than 250 locations throughout the globe, allowing observers to adjust equipment and programming to secure the best possible results.

Yanga Fernández

"When I was applying to schools, Maryland seemed to have the greatest diversity in subfields of astronomy. At the time, I didn't know what I wanted to do; I wanted to explore.

I received a fellowship from Goddard Space Flight Center and spent a year and half there analyzing data sets. I studied clusters of galaxies using data from a satellite, equipped with some of the best X-ray detectors ever put into space. It was basically a case of, `just-see-what-you-can-see,' using technology never used before. But we were able to map clusters of galaxies. That data told us a lot about dark matter and about how fast the Universe is expanding.

I've known I wanted to be an astronomer since 1985 when Halley's Comet came around. I remember being in high school and watching that event. Ever since then, I've been working toward that goal."

Continue on to find out about Solar and Stellar Radio Physics.