Jekyll2026-06-23T12:12:38+00:00https://profxj.github.io/feed.xmlJ. Xavier ProchaskaProfessor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz and Astronomer at UC Observatories — publications, software, and research on galaxies, the intergalactic medium, and fast radio bursts.J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduWelcome to the new site2026-06-21T00:00:00+00:002026-06-21T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2026/06/welcomeWelcome! This is the new home for my research, publications, and software.

Here you will find:

  • Publications — selected papers, with a link to my full, up-to-date list on NASA ADS.
  • Software — the open-source projects and GitHub organizations I lead, spanning astronomical spectroscopy, fast radio bursts, and the machine-learning analysis of oceanographic data.
  • Blog/News — occasional updates, which you are reading now.
  • Contact — how to reach me.

I will use this space to post news about new papers, software releases, and other updates. Thanks for visiting.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduBrightest fast radio burst ever seen lets researchers pinpoint origin with unprecedented precision2025-08-21T00:00:00+00:002025-08-21T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2025/08/brightest-frbUsing newly deployed telescope arrays, our team identified the brightest fast radio burst ever detected — in a nearby galaxy — and localized it with unprecedented precision, challenging prior assumptions about where and how these bursts arise.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduUC Santa Cruz research will harness advanced AI to better measure, predict climate-change impacts2024-09-03T00:00:00+00:002024-09-03T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2024/09/ai-ocean-climateI am leading a UC Santa Cruz project that combines cutting-edge AI with large satellite and in-situ datasets to better estimate the heat content of the upper ocean and detect ocean fronts — improving our ability to measure and predict the impacts of climate change.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduUC Santa Cruz astrophysicists honored for advancing research on the mysterious FRB2024-07-09T00:00:00+00:002024-07-09T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2024/07/chime-frb-grossmann-awardAlong with the CHIME/FRB Collaboration, I shared a Marcel Grossmann Award recognizing the detection and comprehensive analysis of a large population of fast radio bursts — a major step in turning FRBs into routine cosmological tools.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduRecord-breaking fast radio burst is most distant ever detected2023-10-19T00:00:00+00:002023-10-19T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2023/10/most-distant-frbA global team I contributed to detected an eight-billion-year-old fast radio burst — the most ancient and distant yet localized — using telescopes across three continents, pushing FRBs further than ever as probes of the cosmos.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduWith Pivot Fellowship, astronomer J. Xavier Prochaska turns to oceanography2022-09-07T00:00:00+00:002022-09-07T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2022/09/pivot-fellowship-oceanographyA Simons Foundation Pivot Fellowship is supporting my move into oceanography, applying the data-science and spectroscopy methods I developed in astronomy to problems in physical and biological oceanography — including a fellowship year at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduAstronomers track down fast radio bursts to galaxies’ spiral arms2021-05-20T00:00:00+00:002021-05-20T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2021/05/frb-spiral-armsUsing the Hubble Space Telescope, our team pinpointed the locations of five fast radio bursts to the spiral arms of their host galaxies — pointing to young, massive stars (and magnetars) as a likely origin of these brief, powerful blasts.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduAstronomer J. Xavier Prochaska honored for top research paper in Science2021-02-09T00:00:00+00:002021-02-09T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2021/02/newcomb-cleveland-prizeTogether with my coauthors, I was awarded the prestigious Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for our landmark Science paper describing a fast radio burst from a massive galaxy.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduUniverse’s ‘missing matter’ finally found in the space between galaxies2020-05-27T00:00:00+00:002020-05-27T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2020/05/missing-matterUsing localized fast radio bursts as cosmic probes, an international team detected the long-sought “missing” baryons spread through the space between galaxies, solving a decades-old puzzle in the cosmic census of ordinary matter. The result was published in Nature.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

]]>J. Xavier Prochaskajxp@ucsc.eduGalaxy found to float in a tranquil sea of halo gas2019-09-26T00:00:00+00:002019-09-26T00:00:00+00:00https://profxj.github.io/posts/2019/09/halo-gasBy analyzing the signal from a localized fast radio burst that passed through the halo of a massive foreground galaxy, our team characterized the diffuse gas and magnetic field of that halo — demonstrating a new and transformative technique for probing the gas around galaxies. The work appeared in Science.

Featured in UC Santa Cruz News.

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