University of Florida News

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The world’s largest optical telescope has allowed University of Florida astronomers to see new details about deep space galaxies, finding new clues to explain the evolution of galaxies like our own.

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.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A NASA team including three University of Florida astronomers has found six new planets in a distant solar system that in some ways resembles our own.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — At a time when astronomers are searching for Earth-like planets, the University of Florida has received a grant for $500,000 to lead the pack.

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.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Any driver who’s seen deer silhouetted by the headlights of an oncoming car knows that vital information can be conveyed by the outlines of objects.

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.

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.

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 [...]

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.