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Physics and Astronomy

Department Feature
Megapixel X-ray Camera
When an x-ray beam strikes a material sample, the x-rays scatter in many directions at once. The often beautiful scattering patterns that arise contain a wealth of information about the sample's atomic structure. How are these patterns measured? With an x-ray camera! In this photo of BYU's single-crystal x-ray diffraction facility, x-rays arriving from the left scatter from a tiny crystal, and are detected by the 16-megapixel x-ray camera at the right. The speed and sensitivity of state-of-the-art instruments like this have revolutionized the study of material structure-property relationships. Read More

Department News for Wednesday June 19th, 2013

Learn More About the Department

The BYU Department of Physics and Astronomy offers unique and valuable opportunities for students. Click below to watch a short video describing some of these opportunities. [Read More]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Milky Way Over Crater Lake with Airglow

How many different astronomical phenomena have come together to create the above vista? Several. First, in the foreground, is Crater Lake -- a caldera created by volcanism on planet Earth about 7,700 years ago. Next, inside the lake, is water. Although the origin of the water in the crater is melted snowfall, the origin of water on Earth more generally is unclear, but possibly related to ancient Earthly-impacts of icy bodies. Next, the green glow in the sky is airglow, light emitted by atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere as they recombine at night after being separated during the day by energetic sunlight. The many points of light in the sky are stars, glowing by nuclear fusion. They are far above the atmosphere but nearby to our Sun in the Milky Way Galaxy. Finally, the bright arch across the image is the central band of the Milky Way, much further away, on the average, than the nearby stars, and shaped mostly by gravity. Contrary to appearances, the Milky Way band glows by itself and is not illuminated by the airglow. The above image is a six-frame panorama taken during about two weeks ago in Oregon, USA. [Read More]

The Astronomy Picture of the Day is a NASA web site that features a new image or photograph of the universe each day.

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