News & Events

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.

• April 2024: Timelapse of the Total Solar Eclipse of 2024, as observed from North Hero, Vermont.

• April 2024: Physics graduate student and LoCSST researcher, Nick Sorabella, captured this great shot of the eclipse during his travels!
• April 2024: LoCSST is hosted the kickoff event to Massachusetts Space Week at Alumni Lounge on April 16 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. This will include a guest speaker, space-themed posters, and a panel with space-related topics and this will be moderated by Julie Sage. See the Massachusetts Space Week Kick-Off Event Flyer (pdf) for more information or visit the The Space Consortium page for Massachusetts Space week.

• April 2024 Student Research Symposium presentations:

• Sayantan Bhattacharya will present "IC 10's X-ray Universe: Probing the Blue Supergiant X-ray Binary Population".
• Charmi Patel will present "Preparation, Visualization, and inventory of Ultraviolet Airglow Intensities as Observed by LITES".
• Mit Bailey will present "A Novel Controller for MEMS Deformable Mirrors Utilizing Actuator Capacitance".
• Lukas Hanson will present "Using the Alfvèn Wave Solar Model to Study the Solar Wind of the Sun and Sun-like Stars".

• April 2024: Sayantan Bhattacharya will present in 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 will talk 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.

• 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.

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.
  • Reflective Lyot stop low-order wavefront control for future large space telescope coronagraphs
  • The PICTURE-C exoplanetary imaging balloon mission: second flight results and the transition to a new mission, PICTURE-D
• 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.