UC Santa Cruz Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics

08/28/2026

In honor of Lick Observatory’s 150th anniversary, PhD student, Lordrick Kahinga, shares his story into astronomical research! Read more at the link in our bio. 💫🌌

📸 Image Description:
1 - Image of Lordrick Kahinga smiling and posing in front of a blurred background of the UCSC Center for Adaptive Optics.

08/19/2026

Led by Professor Jonathan Fortney, this is the 8th year of the Other World's Laboratory summer program! The program brings together researchers in exoplanet science from around the world to build and foster new science collaborations at UC Santa Cruz campus. 🌍🪐

📸 Image Descriptions:
1 - A group of program participants are sitting on benches. Some are smiling at the camera, others are chatting amongst each other while conducting work on their laptops.
2 - A group of program participants seated in a UC Santa Cruz lecture hall, listening to a presentation from a different program participant.

08/10/2026

4th year Ph.D. student, Mika Lambert, attended the Near-Field Cosmology in the Era of Big Data Workshop in Toronto, Ontario in late July! She had a great time making connections and presenting her work on using dwarf galaxy stellar streams to study the nature of dark matter on small scales. 🌌

Check out some of her photos!

📷 Image Descriptions:
1 - Mika Lambert smiling in front of a building at the workshop location.
2 - An image of the closing remarks slide from the Near-Field Cosmology presentation.

08/03/2026

Congratulations to Sarah Blunt on joining the cohort of Simons Foundation Scientific Software Research Faculty Fellows!

Read more at the link in our bio!

📷 Image Description:
Image of Sarah Blunt smiling in front of a blurred forest background.

07/22/2026

Our 2026 Mandel Astronomy Lecture is now live on Youtube! The UCSC Mandel Lecture is an annual public lecture series sponsored by Steve Mandel and Carol Foote, aiming to promote public awareness and appreciation of space sciences. The event regularly features prominent scientists discussing various topics in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. The lecture is a free community event hosted at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz, CA. 🌌 ☄️

This year, our very own Professor Alexie Leauthaud discussed some of the largest challenges and unknowns in Astrophysics. Check out the lecture with the link in our bio! ⭐

📷Image description:
Photo of UCSC Astronomy Professor Alexie Leauthaud in front of a tree.

06/08/2023

Join us for Astronomy on Tap at Humble Sea Brewery on Thursday, June 15th at 6:30pm!

05/09/2023

Join us for Astronomy on Tap on May 18th at 6:30pm at Humble Sea! See you there!

04/05/2023

Join us for this exciting event on April 17th at the Rio Theater!

On Monday, April 17, at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz, UC Santa Cruz will host the Whispers from Other Worlds event -- a lecture & discussion on NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration's search for life in the cosmos.

The event will feature Thomas Zurbuchen, Retired Director of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, and Nadia Drake, Science Journalist. The presentation will first frame the discussion of looking for extraterrestrial life in the context of the famed 1961 Drake equation, and then cover the ways in which NASA’s Science program focuses on identifying signatures of life elsewhere in the universe.

Join us for this free event, sponsored by the UCSC Astrobiology and Science Communication programs.

Date: Monday, April 17, 2023
Time: 6:30 – 8 PM
Location: The Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Dr., Santa Cruz CA

RSVP here: bit.ly/whispers-event

03/27/2023

Join us for Astronomy on Tap at Humble Sea on Thursday April 20th at 6:30pm!

01/13/2023

Congratulations to UCSC grad Yuting Feng for this amazing discovery!

A search for variable stars called RR Lyrae has found some of the most distant stars in the Milky Way’s halo a million light years away.