GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida astronomers are testing a new infrared camera this summer at the world’s largest telescope that will allow researchers to look for planets outside our own solar system and better explore hidden black holes at the centers of galaxies.
Astronomy Archive
UF astronomers win $8 million to build unique new instrument
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A multinational team led by University of Florida astronomers has won an $8 million grant to build a major new astronomical instrument for the largest optical telescope in the world in Spain’s Canary Islands.
Astronomers find two large planets, plus possible super-Earth-size one
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A team of three University of Florida astronomers contributed to the Kepler spacecraft’s discovery of two Saturn-sized planets, plus a possible third planet with a radius just one-and-a-half times that of Earth, orbiting a distant star.
UF astronomers pioneer new planet-observing technique
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Using the world’s largest optical telescope, a team of University of Florida astronomers has pioneered a new method of observing planets outside our solar system. The method suggests that large Earth-based telescopes could play a leading role in rapidly accelerating research on “extrasolar” planets.
Sea level stargazing: Astronomers make key sighting with Fla. telescope
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — This summer, University of Florida astronomers inaugurated the world’s largest optical telescope on a nearly 8,000-foot mountaintop 3,480 miles away.
But it was a far more modest observatory, located just above sea level in rural Levy County and just down the road from the UF campus, that proved key to a new discovery [...]
Sophisticated telescope camera debuts with peek at nest of black holes
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Less than two months after they inaugurated the world’s largest telescope, University of Florida astronomers have used one of the world’s most advanced telescopic instruments to gather images of the heavens.