exoplanet

UCI scientists will use instrument to detect and classify exoplanets

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

Effectiveness of tool is demonstrated on recent super-Earth discovery at Barnard’s star

Astronomers can learn a lot about planets outside our solar system, including whether they’re capable of supporting life, by studying their surface albedo, or reflectivity. Aomawa Shields, UCI Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy, recently won a grant from the NASA Habitable Worlds program to research this characteristic of planets orbiting relatively […]