This month's Discover magazine will feature Tom Abel, Penn State assistant professor of astronomy, on its cover for his discoveries of the origins of cosmic structures.

Abel, a professor at Penn State since January, used supercomputers to study the origins of the first galaxies, the first stars and other cosmic structures.

"We [Abel and his researchers] found the first stars, how they were born," he said. "We found very massive stars, over one hundred times more massive than the sun."

His study, which began in 1994, combined atomic and molecular physics, as well as the hydrodynamics of cosmic matter.

Earlier this year, the Discovery Channel used some of Abel's computer images of the universe's first cosmological objects in a documentary titled The Unfolding Universe.

Abel's work has also been requested for use in a number of popular science magazines such as Astronomy Magazine, National Geographic, Science News, as well as the New York Times science section and newspapers in Brazil, South Africa and Germany. "He is doing extremely high-quality frontier research," said Peter Meszaros, head of the astronomy department. "He is responsible for developing cutting-edge computational algorithms."

"We've had a streak of Penn State faculty being featured in the media," said Bill Mahon, university spokesman. He added that the university spends about half a billion dollars annually on research projects.

This feature is the latest recognition for Penn State's astronomy department, which the National Research Council named the fastest growing department in the nation in 1995. "This makes us much more competitive for national funding," said Meszaros. He added that a majority of the department's funding comes from the national level with grants from organizations such as NASA.

As for Abel, the research continues.

"We are studying the first supernovae," he said.

Supernovae are stars that explode, forming a very bright but short-lived object that puts out large amounts of energy.