The Ohio State University College of Mathematical & Physical Sciences Department of Astronomy

Information for Prospective Graduate Students

Current OSU Astronomy Graduate Students

Recent First-Author Papers by OSU Astronomy Graduate Students

Research Programs & Observing Facilities

Astronomy Graduate Program Fact Sheet [1.1Mb PDF]

Recent PhD graduates have gone on to postdoctoral positions at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Carnegie Observatories, the Institute for Advanced Study, UC Santa Cruz, the Kavli Institute at the University of Chicago, Space Telescope Science Institute, UCLA, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, University of Leiden, Brera Observatory in Italy, Observatoire de Paris, SUNY Stony Brook, Princeton, and Pierce College. Our recent graduates have been awarded many of the most prestigous postdoctoral fellowships in Astronomy, including several Hubble and Carnegie Fellowships, and the Princeton-Catolica, Menzel, and Clay Fellowships.

Last 10 years of OSU Astronomy PhDs

Complete Listing of all Ph.D. Receipients since 1955

About the Astronomy Department

Astronomy Department Magazine [1.7Mb PDF]

• Ohio State has hired five new faculty in the last 3 years: Todd Thompson, B. Scott Gaudi, Jennifer Johnson, Paul Martini, and Kris Stanek.

• Ohio State is a 1/6 partner in the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) project, which has already achieved first-light with the first of its two 8.4-m mirrors in October 2005, and now has its full complement of two 8.4-m mirrors with aluminum coatings at this writing. Limited science operations with the LBC prime focus cameras began in early 2007, and the first optical and IR spectrometers will be brought online during 2008. As engineering activities ramp down through 2009, science operations will begin to ramp up.

  OSU is building the MODS optical spectrometers, a powerful optical multi-object spectrograph for the LBT, a fixed secondary mirror, and has built the primary-mirror aluminization system. The first MODS spectrograph will be commissioned in 2008 (assembly and testing of MODS1 at OSU has been going in earnest since 2005), with the second MODS spectrograph coming online about a year later.

  A graduate student entering our program in the Autumn of 2008 would have immediate access to the MDM telescopes for research (see below), as well as the unparalleled opportunity of participating in building a major LBT facility instrument and taking part in observatory commissioning activities. By this student's third year (2010/11), the LBT should be operational and ready for dissertation research projects.

• Ohio State is a 1/4 partner in the MDM Observatory Consortium which includes Dartmouth, Michigan, Columbia, and Ohio University in Athens. This gives us 25% of the time on (a) a superb 2.4-m telescope on a Kitt Peak site that routinely delivers sub-arcsecond images, and (b) a 1.3-m telescope on the same site, which we have been using heavily for photometric monitoring and wide-field imaging studies. OSU has provided three facility instruments to MDM: an infrared imager/spectrometer, a CCD spectrometer, and RETROCAM, an side-port CCD camera on the 2.4-meter. A new wide-field 4Kx4K CCD imager for the 1.3-m is being constructed. RETROCAM and the MDM4K camera projects were designed and carried out in large part by OSU graduate students.

• OSU is a partner in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II, participating in all three of the major SDSS-II projects: an imaging and spectroscopic survey of the north Galactic cap aimed primarily at extragalactic science (the Sloan Legacy Survey), a survey of the structure of the Milky Way (SEGUE), and a search for Type Ia supernovae to measure the cosmic expansion history (the Sloan Supernova Survey).

• Ohio State has also been actively engaged in research with small telescopes for a variety of projects, including photometric follow-up of gravitational microlensing events to search for planets. The dual-beam optical/infrared cameras that have been used for this work in Chile by the MicroFUN collaboration were built at OSU. We are continuing our efforts to equip 1-meter class telescopes in the southern hemisphere for related work, particularly as founding members of the SMARTS consortium that now operates the small and medium aperture telescopes at CTIO. For the 1-meter we have provided a CCD camera and 12-position filter wheel, the later designed and built by OSU graduate students. OSU students regularly observe at CTIO as part of our SMARTS projects.

• The Departments of Astronomy and Physics have recently established a Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (CCAPP) to pursue research on the connections between cosmology, astrophysics, and high energy physics. CCAPP is intended to focus Ohio State's expertise in these areas to address questions such as the nature of dark energy, dark matter, and the values of fundamental cosmological parameters. The Center, with over $5M in funding, hosts an active group of graduate and postdoctoral Fellows, a regular seminar series, weekly lunch discussions, and a series of mini-workshops.

• The department has been aggressively expanding its computational resources, including:
  • Two Beowulf cluster, one granted to the department by the Ohio Supercomputing Center's Cluster Ohio project, the other purchased with combined research funds (Gravitational Lensing and Microlensing Planet Search programs). Both are optimized for large projects requiring massively parallel computing (or just serious trivial parallelism). The systems include large (multi-Tb) storage nodes and abundant memory.
  • A network of more than 100 Linux workstations, most with Intel dual-core processors, are assigned to individual students, postdocs, or faculty for their exclusive use. These computers are also linked together into a department-wide Condor cluster that lets us make more efficient use of unused computer cycles during off-hours for high-throughput computing.
  All of these computing resources are available to students in our program (in fact, they are often the primary users).

• There has been one important addition to the course offerings since the brochure was produced: an informal course on Order-of-Magnitude Astrophysics, in which students work their way through a wide range of astronomical problems starting from basic physical principles.

Observational research interests of the Ohio State faculty include extrasolar planets, star formation, stellar evolution, stellar populations, chemical evolution and the origin of the elements, the interstellar medium, the Galactic center, Galactic structure, gravitational microlensing, galaxies, AGN's, and the evolution of quasars. Theoretical research interests include atomic astrophysics, primordial and stellar nucleosynthesis, stellar structure and evolution, the interstellar medium, Galactic structure, dark matter, galaxy dynamics, AGN's, galaxy formation, the intergalactic medium, large scale structure, and determination of cosmological parameters. On many topics, a student has a choice of several possible research advisors. Interested students also have the opportunity to work on instrumentation through the department's Imaging Sciences Laboratory, a group of ten research staff with expertise in optics, detectors, electronics, mechanical design, and software engineering. This group works closely with the observational faculty and builds optical and infrared instruments for a variety of telescopes.

Astronomy is a close-knit department with a lively atmosphere and a great deal of daily contact between students and faculty. Faculty contact comes naturally through research supervision and classes, but also through daily coffee, weekly journal clubs and colloquia, student-organized reading groups, and many informal events. Students at Ohio State have more opportunity to learn from close interaction with faculty than they would in virtually any other astronomy program.

Applying to the Program

Minimum Requirements for Admission

English Proficiency

Online Application Materials

Graduate Admissions

We do not have resources to waive application fees for International or Domestic applicants.

IMPORTANT:

In addition to submitting your application online to the Graduate School, we request that paper copies of your statement of intent, transcripts, and letters of recommendation be sent directly to the Astronomy Department. This ensures that we receive all of the essential parts of your application in a timely fashion. Only sending the materials to the Graduate School can result in significant delays.

Domestic Applicant Checklist

International Applicant Checklist

Deadlines

Domestic Students: 2009 January 2

International Students: 2008 November 30

We strongly encourage applicants to get all materials (including reference letters) to us at least one week ahead of the nominal deadline. Incomplete applications are not eligible for entry in the University-wide fellowship competition. International students who apply after the November 30 deadline will be considered for internal financial aid (TA or RA) but cannot be entered in the University fellowship competition. Late applications for either group of students may not be considered for admission during the upcoming year.

All successful applicants who are not awarded University Fellowships will be offered financial support as Teaching Assistants or Research Assistants; we fully support all of our graduate students from entry through completion of their PhDs. If you are interested in our program but cannot get everything in by the deadline above, please contact the Astronomy Department Graduate Admissions chair.

Further Information

• Specific Advice on applying to the Astronomy Department

• OSU Astronomy Department Website.

• OSU Graduate Admissions Website

Please also feel free to send e-mail to Prof. Kris Stanek (kstanek@astronomy.ohio-state.edu), Graduate Admissions Chair.