Director's Message
Welcome to the second edition of the WCA Observer!
It’s been a busy six months at the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics, with exciting progress across research, major new facilities and community engagement. Our research highlights include new insights into how exoplanets form, the release of a dark matter map from the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS), and the completion of the Fred Young Submillimetre Telescope in Chile. We’re celebrating Professor Mike Fich’s Dunlap Award for Innovation in Astronomical Research Tools and Professor Robert Mann’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and warmly welcoming our new Outreach Coordinator, Skylar Grayson, alongside three outstanding recipients of national fellowships.
Since launching in 2022, our outreach programme has reached more than 17,000 people through over 500 planetarium shows and 50 public talks. We’re proud of what we have achieved and, with your support, hope to reach even more people. Please consider donating to help us continue bringing the wonder of astrophysics to our communities. I hope you enjoy reading more about these achievements and events in this edition of the WCA Observer.
Thank you,
Will Percival
Director, Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics
Professor and Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Distinguished Research Chair in Astrophysics
Featured Research
How an Oddball Hot Jupiter Is Reshaping What We Know About Planets Beyond Our Solar System
A distant, scorching planet with its hot spot in the wrong place has puzzled astronomers for nearly a decade. New research led in part by the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics's Assistant Professor Lisa Dang and her PhD student Ying (Zoe) Shu has turned up the strongest evidence yet for what's behind it, and a hint that our models of these extreme worlds may need to change.
A decade of cosmic discovery
After 10 years of observing the shapes of 61 million distant galaxies, the UNIONS (Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey) collaboration is sharing data that provides strong evidence supporting the standard model of cosmology that the universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy. A team led by WCA's Dr Mike Hudson measures how gravity from dark matter distorts the appearance of the galaxies, an effect called weak gravitational lensing, revealing how matter is distributed across the Universe.
Major new telescope on Chilean summit opens window on universe
Thirty-four years after scientists first conceived it, the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) now rises above the Atacama Desert, Chile. FYST will help answer some of the most important questions in astronomy, including how the universe works, the nature of dark energy and dark matter, how galaxies form and evolve and what happened in those mysterious first moments after the Big Bang. The lead of the Canadian team for FYST, Dr. Michel Fich, WCA Associate Member and recipient of the 2026 Dunlap Award for Innovation in Astronomical Research Tools, says that the team "is eagerly awaiting the wealth of fantastic data that will begin to flow from FYST in a few months”.
WCA News
WCA Public Outreach: 2025-26 Year in Review
We're taking a moment to look back at some of the most exciting events from the WCA's community outreach over the past 12 months!
WCA Welcomes Three New Outstanding National Fellowship Recipients
The Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics (WCA) is delighted to welcome three exceptional early-career researchers who have chosen to bring prestigious national fellowship awards to the WCA. Drs. David Dayi Li, Syeda Lammin Ahad, and Nicholas Kern join the WCA after securing highly competitive fellowship support. Drs. Li and Ahad were awarded the new Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA), while Dr. Kern brings a five-year SKA Fellowship to Waterloo.
A special birthday gift
On April 30, residents of Luther Village on the Park stepped into the cosmos without leaving home. The retirement home hosted the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics (WCA) to an afternoon that paired cutting-edge astrophysics with an immersive journey through space inside Waterloo’s portable planetarium, the Astro-Bubble.
Banner background is a section of the Euclid Deep Field South (70 x zoom). Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA