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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...
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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...
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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...
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Heaviest neutron star to date is a ‘black widow’ eating its mate
July 26, 2022
A team including UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor of Astronomy Alex Filippenko has measured the mass of the heaviest neutron star to date. Read more
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The ultimate fate of a star shredded by a black hole
July 12, 2022
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...
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Astronomers may have detected a ‘dark’ free-floating black hole
June 11, 2022
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 gravitational field — so-called gravitational microlensing. Read more...
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AI reveals unsuspected math underlying search for exoplanets
May 24, 2022
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...
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Chung-Pei Ma is one of six Berkeley faculty members elected to National Academy of Sciences
May 4, 2022
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
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Alex Filippenko Awarded the AAS 2022 Education Prize
February 2, 2022
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 through lectures, TV documentaries, and video courses; his textbook and other popular writings; and his leadership in saving Lick Observatory, a prominent California observatory that faced defunding in 2014." The AAS Education Prize recognizes outstanding contributions to the education of the public, students, and/or the next generation of professional astronomers. Congratulations! Read More...
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Berkeley astronomers to put new space telescope through its paces
January 25, 2022
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 University of California, Berkeley, are chomping at the bit to start observing. Read more...
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