Lick Observatory as viewed from Kepler peak on Aug 27. You can see here how close the fire came. The large dome to the right houses the Shane 3-m telescope. Visible are also the Astrograph dome, the APF dome, the 36″ refractor and the Crossley domes. The fire started to head towards this direction soon after it destroyed the Barnard house at Ptolemy Peak. Firefighters were battling with the flames and keeping them away from approaching the domes.

A team of astronomers led by UC Santa Barbara Professor Crystal Martin and graduate student Stephanie Ho released a paper investigating how these halos interact with the rest of their galaxies. As quasar light travels through these galactic halos, the dust and gas absorb specific wavelengths of light based on its composition. The research team pieced together the distribution and composition of this missing matter by comparing the light spectra from these shrouded quasars to those they can see directly.

A small team led by Ryan Foley, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, was the first to find the source of the gravitational waves, located in a galaxy 130 million light-years away called NGC 4993. Foley’s team captured the first images of the event with the 1-meter Swope Telescope at the Carnegie Institution’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

UC Santa Cruz receives $350,000 in combined grant and donor funds to enable upgrade of the Kast Spectrograph, a crucial instrument for UC astronomers “With this award, we will be bringing the Kast up to the standards of the best observatories in the world,” said Brad Holden, a research astronomer at UC Santa Cruz and principal investigator for the Kast upgrade project. “We will be able to make observations that can currently only be done at a handful of places.”

Sandy Faber, a University Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC and the interim director of UC Observatories, was honored along with 11 other recipients of the National Medal of Science and 11 recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The 2011 National Medal of Science Laureates and 2010 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureates receive their medals from President Obama in the East Room of The White House on February 1, 2013. Ryan K Morris/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation.

“Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet,” said Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. “The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common.”

Two planets in orbit around a mature sun-like star recently suffered a violent collision, astronomers report. “It’s as if Earth and Venus collided with each other,” said Benjamin Zuckerman, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and a co-author on the paper. “Astronomers have never seen anything like this before. Apparently, major catastrophic collisions can take place in a fully mature planetary system.”

A team of astronomers from UCSC and the University of Florida discovered the onset of a huge flow of gas from a quasar, the super-bright core of an extremely remote young galaxy. The gas was expelled from the quasar and its enormous black hole sometime in the space of four years around 10 billion years ago–an extremely brief and ancient blip detectable only through the unlikely convergence of two separate observational efforts.

“Professor Bolte is an ideal choice for this important position,” said Acting Chancellor Blumenthal. “With his proven administrative expertise, as well as his notable accomplishments both in observational astronomy and in the development of astronomical instrumentation, Mike will provide critical leadership for astronomers at UC Santa Cruz and throughout the UC system.”

A team of astronomers has announced the discovery of some of the smallest planets yet detected beyond our solar system. The two newly discovered planets represent a new class of extrasolar planets, and their discovery is a significant advance in the quest for such objects.

Keck Observatory, Hawaii

The Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea is completed based on UCO astronomer Jerry Nelson’s designs.

Lick Observatory, CA

Lick developed the first laser guide-star for adaptive optics. Adaptive optics (AO) removes the blurring by the Earth’s atmosphere from astronomical images and permits ground-based telescopes to see as sharply as though in space.

Lick Observatory, CA

Starting in the late-1980s, detailed measurements of the properties of exploding stars (supernovae) by UC astronomer Alex Filippenko were crucial to the development of methods to calibrate them. This contributed substantially to the 1998 discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe, probably driven by mysterious “dark energy.” Subsequent studies of supernovae, many of which were found at Lick with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, led to greater confidence in the acceleration, and this discovery was honored with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Lick Observatory, CA

Lick developed the first digital detector, which revolutionized astronomy by replacing photographic plates.

Lick Observatory, CA

Commissioned in 1959, this telescope was named in honor of C. Donald Shane, Lick Observatory Director during its design and construction. For many years it was the second-largest reflector in the world.