Astronomy & Astrophysics
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What Hollywood gets wrong (and right!) about protecting the Earth from asteroids
Meet alumna Kirsten Howley, the real-life astrophysicist working to prevent ‘Armageddon’.
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Astronomer J. Xavier Prochaska honored for top research paper in Science
J. Xavier Prochaska, distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, and his coauthors of a landmark paper describing a fast radio burst from a massive galaxy have been chosen to receive the prestigious AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize.
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Two UCSC astronomers elected Fellows of the American Astronomical Society
Astronomers Raja GuhaThakurta and Garth Illingworth were honored as 2021 AAS Fellows for their extraordinary achievement and service.
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UCSC’s Osterbrock Leadership Program goes national
The National Osterbrock Leadership Program provides experiences and opportunities for astronomy graduate students to develop leadership and management skills.
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Friends of Lick Observatory helps fund wildfire recovery efforts
The group has designated $75,000 for the emergency support of wildfire relief efforts at Lick Observatory, where telescopes were saved but infrastructure was damaged.
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UC Santa Cruz leads interdisciplinary consortium for astrobiology research
With funding from NASA, the UCSC-led team will lay the foundation for detecting the signatures of life in the atmospheres of other planets.
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Radioactive elements may be crucial to the habitability of rocky planets
Earth-size planets can have varying amounts of radioactive elements, which generate internal heat that drives a planet’s geological activity and magnetism.
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Anemic star cluster breaks metal-poor record
In a surprising discovery, astronomers have found a globular star cluster in the Andromeda galaxy that contains a record-breaking low amount of metals.
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Astrophysicist Jonathan Fortney awarded 2020 Farinella Prize
Jonathan Fortney has been awarded the 2020 Paolo Farinella Prize from the Europlanet Society for his contributions to the understanding of the structure, evolution, and atmospheric dynamics of giant planets.
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New observations of black hole devouring a star reveal rapid disk formation
The first clear confirmation of accretion disk formation in a tidal disruption event without x-ray emissions supports theoretical predictions.
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UC’s Lick Observatory threatened by fire
Residences on Mt. Hamilton sustained some damage, but fire crews have so far been able to protect the observatory’s telescope domes and visitor center.
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Calcium-rich supernova examined with x-rays for first time
An international team has obtained unprecedented observations of a rare calcium-rich supernova.