News

The University of Illinois Springfield’s Astronomy-Physics program is giving the public three unique opportunities to explore and learn about the wonders of…

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield Astronomy-Physics Program and the UIS Astronomy Interest Group will host a partial solar eclipse watch party. The…

The University of Illinois Springfield’s popular Friday Night Star Parties will resume the Friday after Labor Day and run through the end of October. Those…

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield Astronomy-Physics Program, Lincoln Memorial Garden and the Sangamon Astronomical Society will host a special Star…

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield Astronomy-Physics Program, Lincoln Memorial Garden and the Sangamon Astronomical Society will host a special Star…

The University of Illinois Springfield Astronomy-Physics Program will host three virtual star parties via Zoom. The virtual star parties will be held at 8 p.m…

Prof John Martin Named University Scholar (October 2011) Assistant Professor of Astronomy-Physics John Martin has been named the 2011 University Scholar…

Prof John Martin Earns Grant From National Science Foundation (July 2011) On July 1 the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that a collaboration…

Prof John Martin’s Article in June 2011 issue of Gemini Focus magazine (June 2011) The June 2011 issue of Gemini Focus magazine contains an article…

Nearby Galaxy M33 This is a composite image of the galaxy M33 in the constellation Triangulum.  It is a collection of 40 billion stars about 3 million…

Perseid Meteor Star Party August 11/12 The University of Illinois Springfield Astronomy-Physics Program is co-hosting a viewing of the Perseid Meteor…

Supernova 2013df in NGC 4414 The spiral galaxy to the left of center in this picture is NGC 4414.  It is about 62 million lightyears away from Earth in the…

The Wild Duck Cluster (M11) This open star cluster in the Milky Way is well known to amateur astronomers as a particularly rich and colorful cluster.…

The Eagle Nebula (M16) The cloudy weather lately has been bad news for Friday Night Star Parties but it has given us some time to reduce a back-log of…

Supernova Impostors The UIS Barber Observatory has taken advantage of the clear weather patterns and our new wide-field U42 camera to follow the brightness…

Pictures of the Moon On May 30 we took a series of pictures of the Moon with our wide-field CCD camera on our 20-inch telescope. Below is the image we…

Transit of Venus Star Party on June 5, 2012 We will be hosting a special day-time star party at Southwind Park from 5pm to sunset in Springfield, IL to…

First Light on New CCD Camera (March 2012) The image of the galaxy M81 above is the “first-light” image taken by the new U42 CCD camera at the UIS…

The following is an excerpt from a column by University of Illinois Springfield Associate Professor of Astronomy-Physics John Martin. This column appeared in…

The University of Illinois Springfield’s popular Friday Night Star Parties will be held in a virtual format this fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic.…