IUSB Department of Physics and Astronomy

01/27/2025

Planets Galore! — at the IUSB Observatory, Jan. 29 Posted on January 27, 2025 by jhinnefe Details: The IUSB Observatory will be open, weather permitting, from 6:30-8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 29. Six planets are visible in the evening sky this week, and we’ll try to see them all through the ...

10/21/2024

Here are an image of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS taken Friday night, Oct. 18 (EDT) through the IUSB Observatory's 90mm refractor, and a spectrum of the comet collected Sunday night, Oct. 20 (EDT). Not knowing much about comets, there's little I can say about the spectrum. It clearly shows an emission line at the sodium doublet wavelengths just below 5900 A, though, and also absorption at the Balmer series wavelengths.

09/24/2024

Last week we celebrated Andrew Ratkiewicz, winner of this year's Outstanding Alumni Award of the School of Natural Sciences at IUSB.

Congratulations, Andrew! And thank you for coming back to give a talk and to celebrate with us.

Andrew Ratkiewicz Receives 2024 Alumni of the Year Award for School of Natural Sciences Posted on September 24, 2024 by hpscott Andrew Ratkiewicz, who graduated in 2006 with a B.S. in physics and a minor in math, was honored with the 2024 Alumni of the Year Award for the School of Natural Sciences a...

07/09/2024

Congratulations Andrew!

Graduates from each of our schools will be honored with the Alumni of the Year award during our Night of the Titans event in September. Today we highlight Andrew Ratkiewicz from the School of Natural Sciences.

Andrew earned a Bachelor of Science in physics at IU South Bend, having done research with nearly every faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He is on staff at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working on problems related to national security, with a focus on nuclear data for non-proliferation applications, ransomware attacks and stockpile stewardship. Andrew maintains a research program in basic science, using nuclei to study stars.

https://southbend.iu.edu/night-of-the-titans/index.html

07/08/2024

04/11/2024

Apparent time delay between brightness minima during the April 8, 2024, partial solar eclipse as measured at IUSB and Goshen High Schools. (As a rough estimate: with a 20 mile separation and a speed of 1,500 mph for the eclipse shadow, one would expect ~48 [s].) Both stations are part of the "Titan Weather Network," which makes it easy to pull data for such comparisons. https://blogs.iu.edu/iusbphys/the-titan-weather-network-twn/

04/10/2024

Members of the Physics Club and SPS at IUSB during the solar eclipse on April 8.