Astronomy & Astrophysics
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Princeton awards Madison Medal to astronomer Claire Max
Princeton University will present the James Madison Medal, one of its top honors for alumni, to Claire Max, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz who has developed techniques to enable astronomers to more clearly observe the universe.
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Serendipitous observations reveal rare event in life of distant quasar
Thanks to the sharp eyes of a UCSC undergraduate, astronomers have obtained a surprise view of a never-before-observed event in the birth of a galaxy.
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Astrophysicist Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz wins prestigious Packard Fellowship
Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics, is the ninth young scientist at UCSC to receive a prestigious Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.
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Study shows clumps and streams of dark matter in inner regions of the Milky Way
Using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world to simulate the halo of dark matter that envelopes our galaxy, researchers found dense clumps and streams of the mysterious stuff lurking in the inner regions of the halo, in the same neighborhood
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Study by UCSC undergrad shows a solar system gone wild
Research by a UCSC undergraduate has shown how the regular orbits of the planets could go haywire at some point in the far distant future.
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Strange ring found circling dead star
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has found a bizarre ring of material around the magnetic remains of a star that blasted to smithereens.
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Thirty-Meter Telescope focuses on two candidate sites
After completing a worldwide survey of astronomical sites for the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), the TMT Observatory Corporation board of directors has selected two outstanding sites, one in each hemisphere, for further consideration.
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Astronomer Claire Max elected to National Academy of Sciences
Claire Max, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
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Compact galaxies in early universe pack a big punch
A team of astronomers looking at galaxies in the universe’s distant past have discovered nine young, compact galaxies, each weighing in at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun.
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Nearby star should harbor detectable, Earth-like planets
A rocky planet similar to Earth may be orbiting one of our nearest stellar neighbors and could be detected using existing techniques, according to a new study led by UCSC astronomers.
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Astronomers find one of the youngest and brightest galaxies in the early universe
NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have uncovered what may be one of the youngest and brightest galaxies ever seen in the middle of the cosmic “dark ages,” just 700 million years after the beginning of our universe.
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Unusual supernovae may reveal intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters
A strange and violent fate awaits a white dwarf star that wanders too close to a moderately massive black hole.