Archive:Bill Boyd

UC Berkeley Astronomy Honors the Lives of Two Former Faculty: Leo Blitz and Frank Shu

May 19, 2023

In Memoriam Leo Blitz University of California, Berkeley Professor of Astronomy 1981-2022 Leo Blitz passed away on Dec 20, 2022.       Obituary for Leo Blitz Memorial Site for Leo Blitz: https://www.kudoboard.com/boards/wwZyag8O In Memoriam Frank Shu University of California, Berkeley Professor of Astronomy 1973-2002 Frank Shu passed away on April 22, 2023.       Obituary for Frank Shu http://memorial.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/frankshu/msg4news.html Memorial Site for Frank Shu http://memorial.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/frankshu/wall.html

M87 in 3D: New view of galaxy helps pin down mass of the black hole at its core

April 17, 2023

A new, highly detailed analysis of the motion of stars in the giant elliptical galaxy M87 has been used to determine the mass of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. Read More…

Bright gamma ray burst confounds models of black hole birth

March 28, 2023

Last October, following one of the brightest flashes of gamma rays ever observed in the sky, telescopes around the world captured a wealth of data from an event that is thought to herald the collapse of a massive star and the birth of a black hole. Raffaella Margutti, associate professor of astronomy and of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that the data demonstrated that our models of such events are woefully inadequate. Read More…

Cal scientists star in Webb Telescope exploration

February 7, 2023

Cal scientists star in Webb Telescope exploration (OFFSITE LINK)  

Were galaxies much different in the early universe?

January 24, 2023

An array of 350 radio telescopes in the Karoo desert of South Africa is getting closer to detecting “cosmic dawn” — the era after the Big Bang when stars first ignited and galaxies began to bloom. Joshua Dillon, a research scientist in the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Astronomy is lead author on a new paper describing a twofold increase in the sensitivity of  the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA). Read More…

Webb Space Telescope, Keck team up to study Saturn’s moon Titan

December 1, 2022

UC Berkeley astronomer Imke de Pater is part of a team that is using combined observations with the Webb Space Telescope and the Keck telescopes to study the weather patterns on Saturn’s moon Titan. Read More…

Chrysalis, the lost moon that gave Saturn its rings

September 23, 2022

A team including Burkhard Militzer, UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science and astronomy, has proposed a detailed theory that explains the origin of the rings of Saturn. Read more…

Webb Telescope images Jupiter-like planet 350 light years away

September 1, 2022

UC Berkeley adjunct professor of astronomy Paul Kalas is co-investigator of a team that used the new James Webb Space Telescope to capture images of an exoplanet 350 light years from Earth. Read more…

Surprising details leap out in sharp new James Webb Space Telescope images of Jupiter

August 23, 2022

UC Berkeley professor emerita Imke de Pater is one of the leaders of a team that used the new James Webb Space Telescope to observe Jupiter. Read more…

Brightest stars in the night sky can strip planets to their rocky cores

August 12, 2022

University of California, Berkeley, astronomers report a new, Neptune-sized planet around a hot-burning, but short-lived, A-type star and provide a hint about why so few gas giants smaller than Jupiter have been seen around the brightest 1% of stars in our galaxy. Read more…