space sciences

UCLA Newsroom revisits some of our favorite news items from the year. Publishing resumes on Jan. 4.

Jean-Luc Margot described a straightforward method that can be used to distinguish planets from other bodies like dwarf planets and minor planets.

A planet 100 light-years away that resembles a young Jupiter has been discovered by an international team of astronomers that includes six UCLA scientists.

Two UCLA astronomy professors are playing an important role in an international initiative to build the Cherenkov Telescope Array.

The finding is a major advance because the high-energy particles can be harmful for satellites and humans in space.

NASA’s Dawn mission is observing the dwarf planet Ceres from 2,700 miles above its surface; the space agency has released new images and a video animation.

One of the new meteorites, found in Namibia and weighing in at 811 pounds, is now the largest meteorite in Los Angeles.

The moon does not influence the timing of human births or hospital admissions, a new UCLA study finds, confirming what scientists have known for decades.

Cloud of newly forming stars has one billion times the luminosity of our sun, but is invisible in ordinary light

UCLA scientist says the finding is an important step toward understanding dark matter.

Astronaut and three-time UCLA alumna Anna Lee Fisher addressed a roomful of students Monday at a UCLA Careers in Chemistry and Biochemistry to talk about her career and the lessons she learned while she attended UCLA.

Most of the laws of nature treat particles and antiparticles equally, but stars and planets are made of particles, or matter, and not antiparticles, or antimatter. That asymmetry puzzled scientists for many years.

The team, which will begin ground operations in early 2015, hopes the study will provide new insights into preventing osteoporosis and regrowing bone.

Alan Rubin, the associate curator of the UCLA Meteorite Gallery and unofficial “cosmic killjoy,” regularly has to tell people the answer is no. But he'll also tell you where meteorites actually come from.

A team of UCLA researchers have been awarded 83 million core hours of computing time on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers to study the origins and evolution of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Scientists explained the bizarre object in the center of the Milky Way that some astronomers believed was a hydrogen gas cloud headed toward our galaxy’s enormous black hole.

Dozens of students from majors across campus have spent thousands of hours on building a loaf-of-bread-sized satellite that will measure space weather.

While both planets are rocky with iron cores, the complex dynamics of Mercury's interior create an unusual magnetic field that is three times stronger at its northern hemisphere than its southern one.

Discovery of hydrogen-rich apatite in lunar rocks seemed to hint that the moon's past was more watery. Think again, says UCLA's Jeremy Boyce.

The powerful Gemini Planet Imager, with an advanced spectrometer designed at UCLA, has collected its first set of images and spectra from several distant planetary systems.

"Many of these are the first rocks that formed anywhere in the solar system," curator John Wasson said of the gallery's 1,500 meterorite specimens.