astronomy

Dylan Green describes the challenges of seeking local elected office, and why more scientists should do so

UCI astronomer will be one of the first to conduct research with the world’s premier space telescope

Exhaustive emissions modeling by global physicists narrows down particle candidates

Using three observatories on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi, astronomers at the University of Arizona have discovered the second-most distant quasar ever found. As part of an international effort to confirm and study the newly discovered object, a team at UCI and UC Santa Barbara used the Keck II 10-meter telescope to perform a spectroscopic analysis. The […]

Findings may change fundamental thinking about star system formation, dynamics

Using the Habitable Zone Planet Finder instrument, a team of scientists – including UCI astronomer Paul Robertson – has confirmed that an object previously detected by the Kepler space telescope is an exoplanet, a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system. The team’s findings were published recently in The Astronomical Journal. Called G 9-40b, […]

An international team of astronomers, including a researcher from UCI’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, has found an ultramassive galaxy as it existed more than 12 billion years ago. Galaxy XMM-2599 was extremely productive early on – hatching more than 300 billion suns by the time the universe had its 1 billionth birthday (it’s now […]

UCI astronomer Paul Robertson recently celebrated “first light” for NEID, a new exoplanet hunting instrument he helped develop. Installed at the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, NEID is an extremely precise radial velocity spectrometer. Its initial observations were of 51 Pegasi, a sunlike star that, in 1995, was […]

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument aimed its robotic array of 5,000 fiber-optic eyes at the night sky for the first time recently to capture images showing its unique view of galaxy light. Mounted on a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, DESI was designed to explore the mystery of dark energy, which […]

UCI has posted a new podcast episode featuring an interview with the recently appointed dean of the School of Physical Sciences, James Bullock. Arriving at UCI in 2004, Bullock established a reputation as a leading researcher in astronomy and cosmology. He served as chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy prior to being named […]