Announcements

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COVID-19 update: closure of RAS office
The RAS has been monitoring the situation with the ongoing global outbreak of COVID-19. Our first priority is to contribute to the international public health effort to reduce and slow the spread of the new coronavirus. We have therefore taken the d…
RAS quilt sqaures
RAS Quilt Project - an update
The RAS bicentennial quilt project officially launched at the beginning of October 2019. Since then the society has: Hosted three stitching sessions at the offices in Burlington House where participants have worked on the solar system side of the qu…
Generic planetarium image
UPDATE: Planetarium in central London for RAS bicentenary
***UPDATE Friday 28th February: The planetarium is now closed, thank you to all those who attended*** The second half of February will see cutting-edge astrophysics and tours of the night sky come to the courtyard of Burlington House, in central Lond…
Royal Mail bicentennial stamps 2020
Royal Mail stamps celebrate RAS bicentennial
The set of eight stamps commissioned by Royal Mail for the RAS bicentennial in 2020. Robert Ball / Royal Mail Licence type All Rights Reserved   Ro…
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, Sco…
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 create co…
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 these a…
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, "for contributions…
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…