space sciences

With the successful launch of their ELFIN satellites, UCLA students’ work studying space weather is just beginning.

For the past five years, more than 250 UCLA undergraduates have designed and built a small satellite that will launch into orbit to study space weather.

A team of scientists that includes two UCLA College researchers published a study in Nature Communications that sheds light on the phenomenon.

Their answers point to breakthroughs that are improving daily lives, preserving the health of the planet and revealing the mysteries of the universe.

“It was a rare case in astronomy where two competing models ... offered precisely opposite predictions,” said UCLA professor Steven Furlanetto.

Marco Velli is the observatory scientist on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which will venture into the sun’s outer atmosphere to advance understanding of space weather.

The international team has found the first evidence of a source of high-energy cosmic neutrinos — ghostly subatomic particles that can travel unhindered for billions of light-years to Earth.

Scientists have long been interested in Europa because evidence suggests that a vast ocean lies beneath its icy outer shell.

The research, which enabled viewing of an enormous blue star nicknamed Icarus, increases understanding of the fundamental composition of the universe, said UCLA’s Tommaso Treu, co-author of the study.

UCLA has acquired a rare lunar meteorite that was blasted off the moon by the impact of a large meteoroid, and landed in North Africa.

“I’ve been studying young stars near Earth for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this one,” said UCLA astronomer Benjamin Zuckerman.

Scientists using a state-of-the-art UCLA instrument have witnessed a planetary-scale “tug-of-war” of life, deep Earth and the upper atmosphere that is expressed in atmospheric nitrogen.

Astronaut and alumna Anna Lee Fisher will receive UCLA’s first Science and Education Pioneer award at Young Hall at 2 p.m.

Titan’s liquid methane rain appears to play a major role in shaping its icy surface, and the downpours are much more common than researchers expected.

The astronomers identified a “special comet” called K2 traveling from beyond Saturn’s orbit — the farthest active inbound comet ever seen.

Andrea Ghez is an astronomy professor and pre-eminent scholar on the role of black holes in the evolution of galaxies.

The new hypothesis doesn’t rely on the “unlikely coincidences” that underpin other theories explaining primordial black holes.

More than 1,000 people filled the Court of Sciences on Monday to view the partial eclipse of the sun.

Public event, featuring filtered solar telescopes for safe viewing, will be held from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 21.

Scientists had assumed the core was rotating at about the same speed as the surface, but this surprising observation might reveal what the sun was like when it formed.

Jessica Watkins earned her Ph.D. in geology from UCLA in 2015.

UCLA Ph.D. student Andy Tay writes about a crucial a challenge to long-distance space travel — overcoming the long-term effects of microgravity on our bodies.

An international team of astronomers has observed a striking spiral pattern in the gas surrounding a red giant star called LL Pegasi and its companion star 3,400 light-years from Earth.

A “baby” solar system 300 light-years away has given astrophysicists from UCLA and the Carnegie Institution for Science a rare peek at the formation of a planet.

A UCLA-led team of scientists discovered a white dwarf star in the constellation Boötes whose atmosphere is rich in carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen.