{"id":3109,"date":"2019-10-18T17:11:39","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T00:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nau.edu\/astronomy-and-planetary-science\/?page_id=3109"},"modified":"2025-01-23T14:41:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T21:41:04","slug":"accomplishments-2018","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/accomplishments-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Accomplishments 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

December 2018<\/h3>\n\n
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Ryan Behunin is the co-author of a paper: Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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“Optomechanical cooling in a continuous system<\/a>,” which will publish in Physical Review on Friday. The paper, based on the theory Behunin contributed to, features a new cooling technique using laser light.
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Congratulations to our SPS Chapter for being recognized as a 2017-2018 Distinguished Chapter by the SPS National Office! Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Please congratulate the students, and Buzz Delinger for leading them, when you see them on this honor!
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David Trilling gave an invited talk Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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at the TMT Science Forum<\/a> in Pasadena.
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President Cheng announced that NAU had risen to the top 100 ranking for external funding for non-medical school universities, Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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and rank #201 overall. In that letter (Dec. 11) she explicitly called out both astronomy and planetary sciences as areas of research that have contributed to this success.
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David Trilling is PI of a newly accepted survey program at NOAO (National Optical Astronomy Observatory Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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— the national observatory) entitled “The Deep DECam Outer Solar System Survey.” (DECam is the name of the large-format camera that we will use.) There are 16 co-investigators, including NAU faculty member Chad Trujillo<\/strong>, postdoc Andrew McNeill<\/strong>, and PhD student Will Oldroyd<\/strong>. Former NAU postdocs Michael Mommert<\/strong> and Cesar Fuentes<\/strong> are also CoIs. We have been awarded 46.5 nights of telescope time (that’s a lot!) over the next three years. We will use this time to study the properties of small bodies in the outer Solar System to constrain the formation and evolution of our planetary system.
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Chad Trujillo is in the news again, for another far out discovery: Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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The new object was announced on Monday, December 17, 2018, by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center and has been given the provisional designation 2018 VG18. The discovery was made by Carnegie’s Scott S. Sheppard, the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen, and Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo.<\/p>\n

2018 VG18, nicknamed “Farout” by the discovery team for its extremely distant location, is at about 120 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The second-most-distant observed Solar System object is Eris, at about 96 AU. Pluto is currently at about 34 AU, making 2018 VG18 more than three-and-a-half times more distant than the Solar System’s most-famous dwarf planet.<\/p>\n