Announcements

Mary Somerville from RAS collection
Mary Somerville features in Google Doodle
The Google Doodle for 2 February 2020 celebrates Mary Somerville, the Scottish polymath and science writer, and with Caroline Herschel, the joint first ever woman to be made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Born in Jedburgh…
Mars in 2018
Coming this November: National Astronomy Week to mark best view of Mars until 2033
A National Astronomy Week (NAW) will be held in the UK from Saturday 14 November to Sunday 22 November 2020. The aim of the week is to celebrate the close approach of Mars, and to give members of the public the chance to see the red planet in closeup…
Artist’s impression of gamma-ray burst with orbiting binary star
Stars need a partner to spin Universe’s brightest explosions
When it comes to the biggest and brightest explosions seen in the Universe, University of Warwick astronomers have found that it takes two stars to make a gamma-ray burst.   New research solves the mystery of how stars spin fast enough to crea…
Professor Sandra Moore Faber
Leading astronomers and geophysicists honoured in RAS bicentenary year
The Royal Astronomical Society is pleased to announce the winners of its medals and prizes for 2020, the bicentenary of its foundation. Each year the Society recognises significant achievement in the fields of astronomy and geophysics through th…
University of Bath
National Astronomy Meeting 12-17 July 2020: save the date!
In celebration of the 200 years since its foundation, the Royal Astronomical Society will hold its 2020 National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2020) in the city of Bath. The Society’s founding president Sir William Herschel and his sister Caroline lived in…
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Stormy cluster weather could unleash black hole power and explain lack of cosmic cooling
“Weather” in clusters of galaxies may explain a longstanding puzzle, according to a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge. The scientists used sophisticated simulations to show how powerful jets from supermassive black holes are disrupte…
Nobel Prize in Physics 2019
2019 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for cosmology, exoplanets discoveries
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics recognises discoveries in cosmology and of the first planet in orbit around a Sun-like star.   James Peebles, Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus at Princeton University receives half of the prize,…
Ellen Baker's "Solar System" Quilt
RAS Bicentennial Quilt
  2020 will mark the 200th anniversary of the Royal Astronomical Society. One of the ways the society will celebrate this significant milestone is by running a project to make a commemorative quilt.   200 years ago it was…
exoplanets outside our Solar System
The UK Exoplanet Naming competition is now launched!
Young people given the chance to name a planet! Between Friday 6th September and Friday 18th October, schools and youth organisations across the country can make their naming suggestions via an online submission form on the UK Exoworld website. Thes…
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UK young astronomers gain international medals in Hungary
The UK team of 5 secondary level students have all gained medals in a fierce competition at this year's International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) in Hungary. The results were the best since the UK entered th…
Eimear Gallagher at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Winner of the Patricia Tomkins Undergraduate Prize 2019
Congratulations to Eimear Gallagher who has been awarded The Patricia Tomkins Undergraduate Prize 2019. Eimear is studying Physics with Astrophysics at Nottingham Trent University and is currently on an industrial placement year…
Books on the shelf in the RAS library
Winners of the 2018 RAS thesis prizes
The RAS is pleased to announce the winners of its prizes for the best Ph.D. theses completed in the UK during 2018. Prizes are awarded annually: the Michael Penston Prize for the best thesis in astronomy and astrophysics, the Keith Ru…