Department News

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