News

A third outrigger radio array will go online this week at Hat Creek Observatory, a facility in Northern California formerly owned and operated by UC Berkeley and now managed by the SETI Institute in Mountain View. Together, the four arrays will immensely improve CHIME’s ability to precisely...Read more about Astronomers thought they understood fast radio bursts. A recent one calls that into question.

It may be a “train wreck,” in the words of UC Berkeley astronomer Dan Weisz, but it’s a beautiful train wreck.

A mosaic image of the entire Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31, or M31), 2.5 million light years away but six times larger...Read more about The Hubble Space Telescope completes a high-resolution portrait of our galaxy’s gorgeous neighbor

Sanjana Curtis is an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on some of the most extreme phenomena in the universe, such as the explosive deaths of stars and mergers involving neutron stars and black holes. Many of the elements that make up...Read more about 2024 TOP AWARD WINNER - Sanjana Curtis

The MacArthur Foundation announced the Class of 2024 MacArthur Fellows on Tuesday, October 1. MacArthur Fellowships, often called ‘genius grants,’ provide each recipient with an $800,000 stipend, a “no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an...Read more about UC Berkeley Astronomy Major and Alumni Awarded 2024 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship

The discovery of an Earth-like planet 4,000 light years away in the Milky Way galaxy provides a preview of one possible fate for our planet billions of years in the future, when the sun has turned into a white dwarf, and a blasted and frozen Earth has migrated beyond the orbit of Mars.

...Read more about This rocky planet around a white dwarf resembles Earth — 8 billion years from now

Gibor Basri, Professor Emeritus and former Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at the University of California, Berkeley will receive the 2024 Arthur B.C. Walker II Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The Walker award recognizes outstanding achievement in astronomy and...Read more about Gibor Basri Honored with Walker Award

University of California, Berkeley professor emerita Imke de Pater was part of a team that interpreted new images of Jupiter’s moon Io taken by the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mount Graham in Arizona.Read more about Berkeley professor helps interpret new images of Jupiter’s moon Io

An orbiting space telescope approved by NASA last month and scheduled for launch in 2030 will conduct the first all-sky survey of ultraviolet (UV) sources in the cosmos, providing valuable...Read more about UC Berkeley will manage 0 million NASA mission to map the UV universe

University of California, Berkeley astronomers are part of a team that used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to discover a fast-moving jet stream in Jupiter’s atmosphere.Read more about Webb telescope discovers intense jet stream in Jupiter’s atmosphere

Several groups of University of California, Berkeley astronomers aimed telescopes at SN 2023ixf to capture data that advances our understanding of how exploding stars evolve.Read more about Closest supernova in a decade reveals how exploding stars evolve

A new study conducted by astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, shows that Saturn has long-lasting megastorms with impacts deep in the atmosphere that persist for centuries.Read more about Hundred-year storms? That’s how long they last on Saturn.

University of California, Berkeley astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to reveal new details of Jupiter’s moon, Io.Read more about James Webb Space Telescope sees Jupiter moons in a new light

University of California, Berkeley scientists are part of a team that has devised a new technique for finding and vetting possible radio signals from other civilizations in our galaxy — a major advance in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) that will significantly boost...Read more about When ET calls, can we be sure we’re not being spoofed?

University of California, Berkeley Astronomy research groups lead by Professor Chung-Pei Ma and ...Read more about After 15 years, pulsar timing yields evidence of cosmic gravitational wave background

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

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...Read more about Bright gamma ray burst confounds models of black hole birth

Astrophysicists and space buffs worldwide erupted into cheers after the perfect launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Christmas Day 2021. Days later, they held their collective breaths as sections of the telescope’s mirrors and sunscreen, folded inside like highly intricate...Read more about Cal scientists star in Webb Telescope exploration

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...Read more about Were galaxies much different in the early universe?

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

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 about Chrysalis, the lost moon that gave Saturn its rings

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 about Webb Telescope images Jupiter-like planet 350 light years away

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

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

A team including UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor of Astronomy Alex Filippenko has measured the mass of the heaviest neutron star to date. Read more about Heaviest neutron star to date is a ‘black widow’ eating its mate

By measuring the polarization of light emitted when a star is spaghettified, UC Berkeley graduate student Kishore Patra and professor Alex Filippenko deduce the shape of the debris cloud left behind.Read more about The ultimate fate of a star shredded by a black hole

A team of astronomers led by UC Berkeley graduate student Casey Lam and associate professor Jessica Lu has for the first time discovered what may be a free-floating black hole by observing the brightening of a more distant star as its light was distorted by the object’s strong...Read more about Astronomers may have detected a ‘dark’ free-floating black hole

UC Berkeley astronomers used AI to find unsuspected connections hidden in the complex mathematics arising from general relativity — in particular, how that theory is applied to finding new planets around other stars.Read more about AI reveals unsuspected math underlying search for exoplanets

Chung-Pei Ma, the Judy Chandler Webb Professor in Physical Sciences in the departments of astronomy and physics, is one of six Berkeley faculty members elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Congratulations!Read more about Chung-Pei Ma is one of six Berkeley faculty members elected to National Academy of Sciences

Professor Alex Filippenko has been awarded the American Astronomical Society’s 2022 Education Prize “for his passionate and wildly popular teaching of non-science majors; his mentoring of hundreds of teaching assistants and undergraduate research students; his dedication to public education...Read more about Alex Filippenko Awarded the AAS 2022 Education Prize

NASA’s latest and snazziest satellite, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched on Christmas Day, deployed its 21-foot-wide mirror a mere two weeks ago and reached its orbital destination earlier this week. With a flashy new telescope now nearly a reality, astronomers at the...Read more about Berkeley astronomers to put new space telescope through its paces

Three UC Berkeley astronomers have been named 2022 Fellows of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), an accolade the society instituted in 2020 to honor members for extraordinary achievement and service.

The new fellows are Imke de Pater, now professor emerita of astronomy and of earth...Read more about Three faculty named 2022 Fellows of American Astronomical Society

UC Berkeley Astronomy graduate student Sarafina Nance was recently selected for the Forbes “30 Under 30”...Read more about Q&A with Sarafina Nance, a Ph.D. candidate selected for Forbes “30 Under 30”

Raffaella Margutti, a newly arrived associate professor of astronomy is one of nine winners of the 2022 New Horizons in Physics Prize, awarded every year to early-career scientists by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.

Congratulations Professor Margutti!Read more about Prof. Margutti receives Breakthrough Prize

Professor Chung-Pei Ma contributed to the creation of a mural celebrating women in STEM. Ma worked with artist/scientist Amanda Phingbodhikpakkiya to depict a black hole in the mural.Read more about Black hole at center of swirling new women-in-science mural

A team of astronomers including UC Berkeley professor Alex Filippenko have found convincing evidence that supernovae come in a third flavor, powered by a long-suspected explosive mechanism that may explain a bright supernova humans observed 1,000 ago and that birthed the beautiful Crab Nebula....Read more about Stellar explosion in 1054 C.E. may have been a third flavor of supernova

Professor Courtney Dressing has been awarded the 2021 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize for outstanding achievement in Astronomy “for her leading contributions that have dramatically advanced our understanding of the formation rate, composition, and evolution of planets around low-mass...Read more about Professor Dressing Wins Pierce Prize

Determining how rapidly the universe is expanding is key to understanding our cosmic fate, but with more precise data has come a conundrum: Estimates based on measurements within our local universe don’t agree with extrapolations from the era shortly after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago....Read more about How fast is the universe expanding? Galaxies provide one answer.

On the experience of his competing in the famous television show, Shen writes:

“My greatest fear was that an astronomy or physics clue would show up and I'd flub it. Luckily, I don't think that happened, but honestly, everything was a blur. If you'd like to know some more...Read more about UC Berkeley Astronomer to Appear on Jeopardy! This Week