Berkeley Astronomy

Congratulations to recent Ph.D. grad Jamie Sullivan on winning the Brinson Prize Fellowship! This prestigious fellowship supports cutting-edge research in observational cosmology. 🔭✨
👉🏻 https://brinsonfoundation.org/brinson-prize-fellowship-program/

Tony nominee Raúl Esparza leads in a new musical by Tony winner Michael Mayer & Emmy winner Danny Strong. "Galileo" follows Galileo's clash with Rome's religious institution over celestial discoveries, set to an original rock score. Galileo will likely join the constellation of world premieres that traveled from Berkeley Rep to Broadway — be the first to see it here!

The Department of Astronomy brought together the UC Berkeley campus community for yesterday's solar eclipse!

Today is Big Give! The UC Berkeley community's annual opportunity to give back to the departments and programs closest to their hearts.

Join us this year in supporting the Friends of Astronomy Fund. Your generosity enriches all facets of our department, from enabling students’ travel for research to innovating teaching labs where students uncover fascinating truths about the cosmos. Each gift makes a difference.

Follow this link to donate to the Astronomy Department and show your support for our students: https://givingday.berkeley.edu/giving-day/76721/department/76844

Special for this year's Big Give: If we receive 40 gifts by 9 p.m., we will unlock a $2,000 gift from an anonymous donor!

SAVE THE DATE

Thursday, March 14 is Big Give, the annual online giving day when the entire community comes together to support their favorite departments and programs.

Join us this year in supporting the Friends of Astronomy Fund. Your generosity enriches all facets of our department, from enabling students’ travel for research to innovating teaching labs where students uncover fascinating truths about the cosmos. Each gift makes a difference.

On March 14, follow this link https://ow.ly/WeUe50QRs5P to donate to the Department and show your support for our students.

Special for this year's Big Give: once 40 gifts are made to the Friends of Astronomy Fund, we will unlock a $2,000 gift from an anonymous donor!

See you on March 14 for !

Big Give 2024 Show your support to UC Berkeley during the 10th Big Give by making a gift before 9 p.m. March 14!

Watch an enlightening conversation with UC Berkeley's Astronomy Department Chair, Professor Jessica Lu, in a captivating discussion on inspiring new astronomers and UC Berkeley's incredible offerings.
https://ow.ly/YiKP50QjTW2

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered a fast-moving jet stream in Jupiter's atmosphere, blowing at double the speed of the visible cloud layers below. These powerful winds create wind shears surpassing anything seen on Earth. Imke de Pater, a professor emerita of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Thierry Fouchet from the Observatory of Paris are jointly leading the observations of the Jupiter system. 🌪️🔭

🌓 link to article https://ow.ly/VnM750Q16Ht

Courtney Dressing, professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley, has been selected as one of the leaders of the Science, Technology, Architecture Review Team for an upcoming NASA flagship mission! 🌟
🌓 Link to article: https://ow.ly/Zmfk50PO4P2

Groups led by Alex Filippenko, Raffaella Margutti, and Ryan Chornock, professors of astronomy at UC Berkeley, aimed telescopes at SN 2023ixf to capture data that advances our understanding of how exploding stars evolve.

🌓 Link to article: https://ow.ly/P1y950PG0Rf
📷 Steven Bellavia

Live-stream Chung-Pei Ma, UCB professor of astronomy and physics, Research Briefing on April 29 about the symbiotic relationship between the growths of black holes and galaxies.

Register here: https://nasonline.swoogo.com/briefings2

A new, highly detailed analysis of the motion of stars in the giant elliptical galaxy M87 has been used to determine the mass of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center.

Research team led by Chung-Pei Ma, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy and of physics.

Press Release: http://ow.ly/Mii050NLS0P

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted/STScI, Frank Summers/STScI

BIG THANK YOU to everyone who took part in this year’s Big Give!!! We met the challenge to receive the $5,500 donor match from Luisa F. Hansen PhD! 💙💛

Big Berkeley Thanks — you are the light During 2023, alums, families, students, faculty, staff, and friends came together to support starry-eyed students, astronomical research, and unp...

Time is running short on us meeting the generous donor match from Luisa F. Hansen PhD. If we meet our goal, the department receives an additional $5,500. 🌟 Thank you, Luisa! 🌟

Every gift, at any level, counts towards meeting this goal. Your support during makes a huge difference in the life of this department 🔭 and our students 🐻 . We greatly appreciate your support! 💙💛

http://ow.ly/Etil50NeNxj

BIG GIVE kicks off at 9 p.m. today and goes until 9 p.m. March 9.

Show your support and shine a light on our extraordinary students, innovative faculty, and the incredible research that helps better the world, now and in the future.

Every gift makes a difference! https://give.berkeley.edu/fund/FN7219000

The UC Berkeley stars are aligning for #CalBigGive 2023 UC Berkeley undergrads, grad students, faculty like Alex Filippenko, and even Oski are getting ready for Big Give on March 9, 2023 by showing us what makes u...

Thursday, March 9 is Big Give, the annual online giving day when the entire UC Berkeley community comes together to support their favorite departments and programs.

Join us this year in supporting the Astronomy Department. Your generosity enriches all facets of our department, from enabling students’ travel for research to innovating teaching labs where students uncover fascinating truths about the cosmos.

Each gift makes a difference.
https://give.berkeley.edu/fund/FN7219000

Congratulations to Emeritus Professor Gibor Basri on being named as an American Astronomical Society (AAS) Fellow.

"For sustained contributions in the areas of accretion onto T Tauri stars, studies of stellar rotation and activity, direct detection of stellar magnetic fields, discovery and pioneering work on brown dwarfs and lithium dating, and service to the AAS as the founding chair of the Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy and co-chair of the 2018 Task Force on Diversity in Graduate Education."

Press Release: http://ow.ly/271P50MOMjX

An array of 350 radio telescopes in the Karoo desert of South Africa is getting closer to detecting “cosmic dawn” — the era after the Big Bang when stars first ignited and galaxies began to bloom.

Joshua Dillon, a research scientist in the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Astronomy is lead author on a new paper describing a twofold increase in the sensitivity of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA).

http://ow.ly/kcG950MIgxm

A team including Burkhard Militzer, UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science and astronomy, has proposed a detailed theory that explains the origin of the rings of Saturn.
http://ow.ly/23VF50KTgU3

Image Credit: B. Militzer and NASA

Paul Kalas adjunct professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley, and a co-investigator for the James Webb Space Telescope Early Release Science program focused on exoplanets, captured images of a Jupiter-like planet 350 light years from Earth.
http://ow.ly/lb9Y50Kyl1e

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA, A. Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team, and A. Pagan, STScI

University of California Observatories is bringing the critically acclaimed one-man show “Einstein!” to UC Berkeley. This was the HIGHEST GROSSING SHOW for the STEM Festival in NYC!
Sunday, September 4, 7 pm, in Wheeler Auditorium
GA: $40/UCB Students:$20
http://ow.ly/2Pj450KtpNn

UC Berkeley professor emerita Imke de Pater co-led the scientific observations of Jupiter, which revealed "incredible" images using the James Webb Space Telescope.
http://ow.ly/Czih50Kqxl7

Image Credit: NASA, European Space Agency, Jupiter Early Release Science team.
Image Processing: Judy Schmidt

Prof. Courtney Dressing and Steven Giacalone have discovered a Neptune-sized planet around an 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.

http://ow.ly/iagB50Kj9pk

Image credit: Steven Giacalone

A 'black widow' eating its mate: A team including UC Berkeley Prof. Alex Filippenko has measured the mass of the heaviest neutron star to date.
http://ow.ly/loZM50K5Ol4

Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

The Ultimate Fate of a Star Shredded by a Black Hole

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.

Press Release: http://ow.ly/G08650JUqsN

Still looking to enroll into a class this summer? Interested in stars?
Take ASTRON 9: The Nature of Stars! This class will be offered in-person in Session D and will be taught by Kishore Patra. http://ow.ly/QfUm50JoC7s

Congratulations to Professor Ma on her election to the National Academy of Sciences!
http://ow.ly/z7mT50J1A4c

Cultural Astronomy Summer Session. Learn more about how our human culture views astronomy. This is a great course for both STEM and non-STEM students. Opening the world of Astronomy to arts and humanities, social and biological sciences majors as well as students pursuing a STEM degree!

Enroll in From the Earth to the Stars in One Giant Leap (ASTRON 9)!

This class will be taught by space researcher Lawrence Kuznetz. Lawrence has worked extensively at NASA as an engineer and scientist.