Astronomy & Astrophysics
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COSMOS program serves as a portal for aspiring astrophysicist’s journey to UC Santa Cruz
Her high school experience on campus motivated and inspired Julia Stewart (Crown ’24, astronomy) to matriculate to UCSC. Now she is paving the way for the next generation of math and science protégés seeking their own North Star
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Astronomer Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz honored as Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences
Ramirez-Ruiz and alumnus Scott Shaffer were selected by the California Academy of Sciences to join the ranks of Academy Fellows.
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UCSC welcomes 41 outstanding new faculty members
With the start of the 2022-23 academic year, UC Santa Cruz welcomes 41 new senate faculty members. The research and creative scholarship and expertise brought to our campus by these new faculty colleagues will strengthen existing areas of work and open discovery opportunities.
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Collaboration between engineering and astrophysics will develop cutting-edge spectrometers-on-a-chip
Two researchers have won an NSF grant that will allow them to pursue the emerging technology of spectrometers on a chip – tiny devices for separating and measuring light at ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths which can enable advances in astronomy when used as part of telescope instrumentation.
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Astronomer Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz to give NSF Distinguished Lecture Oct. 6
The National Science Foundation has invited Ramirez-Ruiz to give a Distinguished Lecture sponsored by the NSF Directorates for Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Education and Human Resources.
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With Pivot Fellowship, astronomer J. Xavier Prochaska turns to oceanography
A new program from the Simons Foundation supports successful researchers who have a deep interest, curiosity, and drive to make contributions to a new discipline.
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Pioneering radio astronomer Frank Drake dies at 92
Frank Drake, professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics and an eminent radio astronomer known for his pioneering efforts in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), died September 2 at his home in Aptos.
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NASA releases Webb telescope’s first exoplanet image
UCSC astronomers led the analysis of the first exoplanet images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
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Astronomer Ariadna Murguia-Berthier wins 2022 Trumpler Award for Ph.D. thesis
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is honoring Murguia-Berthier for the research she completed as a graduate student in astronomy at UC Santa Cruz.
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Astronomers witness star-slinging tug-of-war between merging galaxies
Observations of a newly-dormant galaxy indicate that it stopped forming stars not because it used up all of its gas but because most of its star-forming fuel was thrown out of the system as it merged with another galaxy.
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JWST makes first unequivocal detection of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere
UCSC astronomer Natalie Batalha leads a team that detected carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-39b using the James Webb Space Telescope.
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Missing carbon monoxide in planetary disks was hiding in the ice
In planetary disks, carbon monoxide is lurking in large chunks of ice, solving the decade-old question, ‘Where is the CO?’