Announcements

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Royal Astronomical Society Honours Stars of Astronomy and Geophysics
The Royal Astronomical Society today announced the 2021 winners of its medals and prizes, awarded to scientists around the world for significant achievement in the fields of astronomy and geophysics. Their work encompasses topics as diverse as…
Map of stars in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds made using Gaia data
Gaia: most accurate data ever for nearly two billion stars
Today (3 December), an international team of astronomers announced the most detailed ever catalogue of the stars in a huge swathe of our Milky Way galaxy. The measurements of stellar positions, movement, brightness and colours are in the third e…
The cover page of the journal GJI
GJI 2020 Student Author Award winners announced
Geophysical Journal International (GJI) is delighted to announce the winners of its Student Author Awards for 2020.  The awards are designed to recognise and acknowledge the best papers submitted to GJI by young scientists in the field. Ma…
Banner for 2020 ECN poster winners announcement
RAS Early Career Poster Exhibition Winners Announcement
With NAM cancelled in the RAS's 200th anniversary year, the RAS wanted to give early career researchers the opportunity to share their work in a format that is freely available to all. Led by the new RAS Early Careers Network (ECN), 272 students, pos…
Hubble Image : Crab Nebula
RAS GCSE Astronomy Student 2020 Online Poster Competition launched!
Our online GCSE Astronomy poster competition is launched today! Did you study for GCSE Astronomy with a view to taking the exam in the summer of 2020? If so, you are eligible to enter our RAS GCSE Astronomy online poster competition. The RAS invit…
Image of Mars, taken from Earth
Take a look at Mars for National Astronomy Week!
We’ll be celebrating Mars in a series of free events for children and adults in National Astronomy Week. From 14 to 22 November, the NAW team will bring you discussions by leading scientists, astrobiologists, presenters and writers every day, and in…
Image of Mars, taken from Earth
UK to celebrate Mars in eighth National Astronomy Week
The eighth National Astronomy Week (NAW 2020) will run from 14 to 22 November. Throughout NAW, UK astronomers will celebrate the close approach of Mars to the Earth with a series of free online talks and remote observing events. The Royal Astronomica…
GeCAA
UK medals for Global e-Competition on Astronomy and Astrophysics
5 Medals for UK Team in 2020! The first Global e-Competition on Astronomy and Astrophysics (GeCAA) took place on-line, hosted by Estonia. This was put together to replace the postponed 14th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA)…
Italian ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in the Cupola on the International Space Station
RAS Supermassive Podcast: Humans in Space!
This month the RAS Supermassive podcast looks at humans in space. Our presenters Becky Smethurst and Izzie Clarke are (very) excited to talk to superstar astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti about her work as an astronaut - and where we're hopi…
Artist’s impression of a galaxy
Astronomers turn up the heavy metal to shed light on star formation
Astronomers from The University of Western Australia’s node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have developed a new way to study star formation in galaxies from the dawn of time to today. The new work appears in a paper…
The supermassive black hole at the core of supergiant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, with a mass about 7 billion times that of the Sun,[15] as depicted in the first image released by the Event Horizon Telescope (10 April 2019)
Professors Sir Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez share Nobel Prize in Physics
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today announced the winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, recognising seminal discoveries about the creation and location of black holes. Professor Sir Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford receives ha…
Professor John Barrow
Professor John Barrow, FRS FRAS, 1952-2020
The Royal Astronomical Society offers its condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Professor John Barrow, who has died at the age of 67. Barrow’s many awards and prizes included the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, which he w…