Campus News

A team of astrophysicists, including two researchers from CU Boulder, have caught a glimpse of a new and rocky planet called LP 791-18d. There, temperatures on the dayside could climb to more than 250 degrees Fahrenheit, while volcanoes blast the planet's surface.

For three years at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, CU Boulder students enrolled in "Experimental Physics I" spent an estimated 56,000 hours analyzing the behavior of hundreds of solar flares. Their results could help astrophysicists understand how the sun's corona reaches temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

As early as 2030, engineers and robots from Earth could begin construction on an astronomical observatory that would expand over 77 square miles of the moon’s surface—almost entirely using materials mined from the moon itself.

CU Boulder astrophysicists Kevin Reardon and Sarah Bruce are traveling across the globe to the fringes of Australia to witness a rare event—a total solar eclipse that will last just one minute but could help scientists answer a burning mystery about the sun.

In a new study, CU Boulder astrophysicist Erica Nelson and her colleagues spotted six "fuzzy dots" of light in images from the James Webb Space Telescope. The candidate galaxies may have existed just 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang and contain almost as many stars as the Milky Way.

The universe's carbon atoms complete a journey that spans eons—forming in the hearts of dying stars, then becoming a part of planets and even living organisms. Now, a team led by CU Boulder scientist Jordy Bouwman has uncovered the chemistry behind one tiny, but critical, step in this process.

A first-of-its-kind sensor, developed by a team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, will measure sunlight reflecting from Earth with more accuracy than any instrument in space or on the ground.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft blasted off this morning from Florida in the first stage of its 25-day journey to circle the moon and return to Earth. Two CU Boulder scientists talk about what lies in store for the space agency’s ambitious Artemis Program.

CU Boulder geologist Lisa Mayhew serves on the science team for NASA’s Perseverance rover, an intrepid machine that has crossed over nearly 8 miles of the surface of Mars—and is helping to recreate the forces that shaped this planet into what it looks like today.

On Monday, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test slammed into an asteroid called Dimorphos at speeds of more than 14,000 miles per hour. CU Boulder aerospace engineer Jay McMahon breaks down how this test could one day help to protect life on Earth.