Astronomy and Planetary Science

The universe is awaiting your exploration

The Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science at Northern Arizona University offers various bachelor’s degrees, and a doctoral degree.

The department has a small, family feeling. At NAU, your instructors will know you by name; they are easily accessible, and they genuinely care about student success. Lecture courses are taught almost exclusively by full-time faculty. Both undergraduate and graduate students are routinely and deeply involved in faculty research.

The sense of community I felt while at NAU is something I very much miss.

– graduate who is now a PhD

Our Classroom is the Cosmos!
Join us: we’re looking for a few good students!

NAU aims to be the nation’s preeminent engine of opportunity, vehicle of economic mobility, and driver of social impact by delivering equitable postsecondary value in Arizona and beyond.

Northern Arizona University sits at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, on homelands sacred to Native Americans throughout the region.
We honor their past, present, and future generations, who have lived here for millennia and will forever call this place home.

Explore our degrees

Bachelor's Degrees

Doctoral Degrees

Research spotlight

Decorative image: Organic molecules floating in space

Food grows better on the moon than on Mars, scientists find

Posted by Author on Source on January 09, 2025

"The interesting thing is that the lunar crops grew better than the Martian ones," said Laura Lee, a graduate research assistant at Northern Arizona University who presented the research poster at the 2024 American Geophysical Union, speaking to Space.com. "We had thought that it would be the other way around." Read the full article at Space.com

Northern Arizona University student studies comet trajectories through work at Lowell Observatory

Posted by Author on Source on January 06, 2025

Northern Arizona University doctoral student Sam Hemmelgarn stands next to the Clark Telescope at Lowell Observatory on Friday, Dec. 27. She has been working with Lowell on a model that uses meteor showers to learn about the path of long-period comets.Photo Credit: Hattie Loper, Arizona Daily Sun A Northern Arizona University Ph.D. student working at Lowell Observatory helped lead a study using meteor showers to predict the path of comets that take hundreds of years to…

How to find a comet before it hits Earth

Posted by Author on Source on December 12, 2024

Q: How do you find a comet that could pose a threat to Earth but hasn’t passed our planet in the last 200 years or more? A: You look for its footprint. This is the basis of research led by Samantha Hemmelgarn, a first-year doctoral student in Northern Arizona University’s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science. Installing the Lowell Observatory Cameras for All-Sky Meteor Surveillance (LOCAMS) station in Holbrook in August 2023. Hemmelgarn worked on LOCAMS…

Crater on Mars named after former NAU department head

Posted by Author on Source on December 07, 2024

A crater on the surface of Mars was recently named in honor of Nadine Barlow, a former chair of the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at Northern Arizona University (NAU). Read the full story from the Arizona Daily Sun.

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