Department News

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