Below you will find a list of current Lowell Center for Space Science & Technology (LoCSST) news and announcements. If you are looking for past ones, please visit our Past News and Announcements page.
2024 News and Announcements
- April 2024: Timelapse of the Total Solar Eclipse of 2024, as observed from North Hero, Vermont.
Eclipse captured by Nick Sorabella.
- April 2024: Physics graduate student and LoCSST researcher, Nick Sorabella, captured this great shot of the eclipse during his travels!
- April 16, 2024: LoCSST hosted a very successful Massachusetts Space Week Kickoff event in conjunction with The Space Consortium with approximately 100 faculty, staff and students from UMass Lowell, state officials, Massachusetts Alliance for Space Technology (MASTS) partners, the local public, and others attending. Stay tuned for photos!
- April 2024 Student Research Symposium presentations:
- Sayantan Bhattacharya presented "IC 10's X-ray Universe: Probing the Blue Supergiant X-ray Binary Population".
- Charmi Patel presented "Preparation, Visualization, and inventory of Ultraviolet Airglow Intensities as Observed by LITES".
- Mit Bailey presented "A Novel Controller for MEMS Deformable Mirrors Utilizing Actuator Capacitance".
- Lukas Hanson presented "Using the Alfvèn Wave Solar Model to Study the Solar Wind of the Sun and Sun-like Stars".
- April 2024: Sayantan Bhattacharya successfully defended his PhD dissertation on April 5 entitled “X-RAY BINARIES IN NEARBY DWARF GALAXY IC 10: NOT TO MENTION THE X-1"
- April 2024: Prof. Silas Laycock talked with WCAP-AM radio talk-show morning host about the Solar Eclipse on Friday, April 5.
- March 2024: Prof. Silas Laycock gave an interview about the eclipse to The Eagle-Tribune’s Monica Sager on Tuesday, April 2 at 10:30! Stay tuned for the article once available!
- March 2024: Edwin Aguirre's article on the April 8 solar eclipse is now live in UML News: Here Are Some Tips on How to Safely Observe and Photograph the Eclipse
- March 2024: Prof. Silas Laycock and others spoke at Spring 2024’s Kennedy College of Sciences Conversation Starter on “Scientific Literacy and Communication” on March 13 from 3-6 p.m. in the SAAB-ETIC, Perry Atrium.
- March 2024: Sunip Mukherjee virtually attended “Meeting the Challenges of Limited Observations for the Global Modelling of the Ionosphere-Thermosphere System” on March 8.
- February 2024: (Feb. 29, 2024) – Physics Associate Professor Silas Laycock explains the science and history behind leap days in this live segment, available nationally on this platform. FOX Weather Channel: The science behind leap years
- February 2024: An article on Prof. Ofer Cohen’s paper was described on 2/21 in a Phys.org article: Possible atmospheric destruction of a potentially habitable exoplanet
- February 2024: Congratulations to our 4 grad students- Charmi Patel, Mitchell Bailey, Thaddeus Potter, and Lukas Hanson-for receiving $3500 each for MASGC fellowships Spring24 semester!
- January 2024: Prof. Ofer Cohen presented the talk “Three-dimensional, Time-dependent MHD Simulation of Disk-Magnetosphere-Stellar Wind Interaction in a T Tauri, Protoplanetary System” at American Astronomical Society (AAS) New Orleans.
Nicholas Sorabella presenting his poster.
- January 2024: Nicholas Sorabella presented the poster "The SMILE Project: A User-friendly Suite to Search for and Model Self-lensing Binary Systems" at AAS New Orleans.
- January 2024: Graduate student Sayantan Bhattacharya presented IC 10's X-ray Universe: Probing the Blue Supergiant X-ray Binary Population (Sayantan Bhattacharya, Silas G. T. Laycock, Dimitris M. Christodoulou) at the AAS meeting in New Orleans.
- January 2024: Prof. Tim Cook presented NAIL: a Novel, Asynchronous, Integrating, Latching deformable mirror controller (Timothy Cook, Mitchell Bailey, Supriya Chakrabarti, Kuravi Hewawasam and Christopher Mendillo) at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in New Orleans.
- October, 27 2023: Students enjoying the Halloween-themed event at Schueller Observatory “spooky viewing party”
2023 News and Announcements
- December, 13 2023: Physics Associate Professor Silas Laycock told reporters conditions Wednesday evening would provide the best view of a meteor shower this year. He explained Geminids would be visible to the left of the constellation Orion’s Belt.(WBUR: UMass Lowell expert advises stargazers of meteor shower)
- December 2023: Supriya Chakrabarti did a “pulsar podcast” entitled “What Kind of Space Research Happens in Massachusetts” with the Museum of Science.
- December 2023: Mitchell Bailey successfully completed his qualifier today for a PhD in Computer Engineering – way to go Mit!
- December 2023: Prof. Cohen presented "The Possible Impact of a Close-in Exoplanet on Type-II Radio Burst Signature" at Fall American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting.
- November, 21 2023: Mit Bailey successfully presented his literature survey paper/Phd qualifier “Free space communication systems and methods in the near-earth and lunar regimes”
- November, 11 2023:Congratulations to Lukas Hanson who successfully passed his MS Thesis Defense "Using the Space Weather Modeling Framework to Study the Solar Wind of the Sun and Sun-like Stars”.
- November 10, 2023: Congratulations to Charmi Patel who successfully passed her MS Dissertation Proposal Defense in Physics on the title is "Airglow as seen by LITES".
- November, 7 2023: Congratulations to Sunip Mukherjee for successfully defending his Ph.D. in Physics . The title is: Multi-Instrument, Multi-Location Observation and Modeling of the Upper Atmosphere-Ionosphere.
- October 2023: Congratulations to Guangfeng Yu who successfully passed his defense on October 12! The tile is: Monolithic Achromatic Nulling Interferometric Coronagraph Contrast Measurement.
- October, 13 2023: The meeting held at the Lanesville Community Center featured a wide-ranging talk by UMass Lowell Physics Professor Supriya Chakrabarti, director of the Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology.
- Professor Chakrabarti reviewed a series of astrophysics and space science research projects, including the development, with student participation, of new instruments that are used with ground, balloon, and space-based platforms (including the Hubble) and MASTS, a "one-stop support system for innovators working on small spacecraft," with partners from academia, industry, and government.
- September 2023: MASTS was featured in the following media
- WHAV(Wavelengths): UMass Lowell Secures $5.5 Million for Miniature Space Satellite Program; Could Fuel Startups
- Boston Business Journal: UMass Lowell establishes center for satellite, spacecraft work
- Inside Lowell: Grant Helps UML Aerospace Center Blast Off
- August 2023: Prof. Chris Mendillo presented two papers at SPIE, San Diego CA.
- August 2023: Prof. Supriya Chakrabarti presented Development and field tests of two spectral imagers for aeronomy applications at 47th Annual European Meeting on Atmospheric Studies by Optical Methods.
- August 2023: Prof. Silas Laycock and and grad student, Nicholas Sorabella were recently interviewed by UMass Lowell for the NASA grant "Physics Grad Student Named One of NASA’s FINESST".
- August 2023: Associate Professor Ofer Cohen was quoted in the Live Science article: Highest-energy sunlight ever recorded is far beyond what scientists thought possible.
- August 2023: Kalpa Henadhira Arachchige presents a poster at the Solar Heliospheric and Interplanetary Environment (SHINE) 2023 Workshop in Stowe, Vt. about "The Connection Between the Free Parameters of a Solar Wind Model and the Sunspot Solar Cycle in the Context of Solar Wind Predictions at 1 AU".
- July 2023: Prof. Supriya Chakrabarti and graduate student, Mitchell Bailey, hosted students and mentors (UMass Boston) from Partners Aligned to Heighten Broad Participation in STEM (PATHS)
- July 2023: Congratulations to Nicholas Sorabella and his advisor, Silas Laycock, on being awarded NASA’s FINESST research grant. Nick is developing a computational model for gravitational self-lensing.