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Berkeley Participates in Yuri’s Night Celebration at CalAcademy
April 16, 2015
Every year in April a world-wide celebration is held to honor Yuri Gagarin, the first human being to venture into space. This year, members from the UC Berkeley Department of Astronomy took part in honoring this historical achievement with a Yuri's Night celebration at the California Academy of Sciences. Graduate students Erik Petigura and Jason Wang managed telescope viewings on the Academy's living roof, while graduate student Lauren Weiss helped manage the Friends of Lick Observatory table in the African Hall. The table was set up with a live feed and prerecorded footage to the APF (the Automated Planet Finder) and included the Superplanet…
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New Instrument Extends the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to New Realms
March 23, 2015
From Astronomy Magazine: "Astronomers have expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence into a new realm with detectors tuned to infrared light. Their new instrument has just begun to scour the sky for messages from other worlds. “Infrared light would be an excellent means of interstellar communication,” said Shelley Wright from the University of California (UC) in San Diego who led the development of the new instrument while at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics. Pulses from a powerful infrared laser could outshine a star, if only for a billionth of a second. Interstellar gas and dust…
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Google gives Lick Observatory $1 million
February 13, 2015
Copied from original article located here. By Robert Sanders - February 10th 2015 Google Inc. has given $1 million to the University of California’s Lick Observatory in what astronomers hope is the first of many private gifts to support an invaluable teaching and research resource for the state. The unrestricted funds, spread over two years, will go toward general expenses, augmenting the $1.5 million the UC Office of the President gives annually to operate the mountaintop observatory for the 10-campus UC system. “Lick Observatory has been making important discoveries while training generations of scientists for more than 100 years,” said Chris…
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