astronomy

Topic description and stories

One year and 272 billion measurements later, Gaia team celebrates first anniversary of observations

25 Aug 2015

A space mission to create the largest, most-accurate, three-dimensional map of the Milky Way is celebrating its first completed year of observations...

̽��ֱ��central object is a very distant galaxy, labelled BDF 3299. ̽��ֱ��bright red cloud just to the lower left is the ALMA detection of a vast cloud of material that is in the process of assembling the very young galaxy

Astronomers witness assembly of galaxies in the early Universe for the first time

22 Jul 2015

An international team of astronomers led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have detected the most distant clouds of star-forming gas yet found in normal...

Gaia satellite and amateur astronomers spot one in a billion star

17 Jul 2015

̽��ֱ��Gaia satellite has discovered a unique binary system where one star is ‘eating’ the other, but neither star has any hydrogen, the most common...

Artist's impression of the SKA, which will be made up of thousands of dishes that operate as one gigantic telescope

Masters of the universe

19 Jun 2015

̽��ֱ��‘world’s largest IT project’ — a system with the power of one hundred million home computers — may help to unravel many of the mysteries of our...

Artist’s impression of one of the possible galaxy strangulation mechanisms: star-forming galaxies (fed by gas inflows) are accreted into a massive hot halo, which ‘strangles’ them and leads to their death.

Cause of galactic death: strangulation

13 May 2015

Astronomers have partially solved an epic whodunit: what kills galaxies so that they can no longer produce new stars?

Artist’s impression of super-Earth 55 Cancri e, showing a hot partially-molten surface of the planet before and after possible volcanic activity on the day side.

Astronomers find first evidence of changing conditions on a super Earth

05 May 2015

Astronomers have detected wildly changing temperatures on a super Earth – the first time any atmospheric variability has been observed on a rocky...

̽��ֱ��dwarf galaxies are located near the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, at the centre of the image.

Welcome to the neighbourhood: new dwarf galaxies discovered in orbit around the Milky Way

10 Mar 2015

Astronomers have discovered a ‘treasure trove’ of rare dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way. ̽��ֱ��discoveries could hold the key to...

Polarisation of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Planck reveals first stars were born late

05 Feb 2015

New maps from the Planck satellite uncover the ‘polarised’ light from the early Universe across the entire sky, revealing that the first stars formed...