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 […]
Astronomers at UCI and Texas A&M University have obtained the most detailed view yet of an inner cold gas disk around a distant supermassive black hole. Studying the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 3258 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array – a powerful radio telescope array in the high desert of northern Chile – the scientists […]
Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, UCI astronomers have identified a galaxy with an unexpectedly high amount of dark matter at its core. Descended from a family of galaxies called “red nuggets” that formed relatively soon after the Big Bang but were stalled in their growth about 10 billion years ago, Markarian 1216 has […]
A new episode of The UCI Podcast featuring interviews with two UCI faculty members is now available. The first segment is a conversation on the history of video games through the lens of LGBTQ theory with Bonnie “Bo” Ruberg, assistant professor of informatics. Ruberg’s new book, Video Games Have Always Been Queer, is on shelves […]
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, visiting professor at the University of Oxford and chancellor of Scotland’s University of Dundee, enthralled a capacity audience in the Irvine Barclay Theatre on the UCI campus Tuesday night as she delivered the 2019 Reines Lecture. Bell Burnell, named dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2007, recounted […]
Effectiveness of tool is demonstrated on recent super-Earth discovery at Barnard’s star
UCI’s Frederick Reines Hall is home to happy astronomers after this week’s announcement of NASA’s selection of the new Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer mission. The two-year, $242 million SPHEREx is targeted to launch in 2023. Asantha Cooray, UCI professor of physics & astronomy, will head one […]
UCI expects to double number of graduate students in Cal-Bridge program
Asteroid 1978VT8 has a new name. The Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union recently dubbed it 9271Trimble in honor of Virginia Trimble, UCI professor of physics & astronomy. “With roughly 7 billion people in the world and 700,000 known asteroids, one person in 10,000 could have one of these entities named after them, […]