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Planetary systems can be harsh environments in their early history. The young worlds orbit suns in stellar nurseries, clusters of stars where violent encounters are commonplace. None of this makes it easy for life to get going, but now astronomers at...

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the oldest and faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 have made an unexpected finding. They discovered a dwarf galaxy in our cosmic backyard, only 30 million light-years...

Next Monday morning (21 January), skywatchers across the UK will be able to see a total eclipse of the Moon. This spectacular event is easy to see, and is the last chance for UK observers to see a total lunar eclipse in its entirety until 2029. A...

The Royal Astronomical Society is pleased to announce the 2019 winners of its awards, medals and prizes . Each year the RAS recognises significant achievement in the fields of astronomy and geophysics through these awards. The announcements were made...

The RAS expresses its thanks to eleven reviewers recognised by the editorial board of Geophysical Journal International , its leading academic journal in the field of geophysics. The editorial board wishes to acknowledge the outstanding work...

Scientists have found evidence that dark matter can be heated up and moved around, as a result of star formation in galaxies. The findings provide the first observational evidence for the effect known as ‘dark matter heating’, and give new clues as...

The Royal Astronomical Society offers its condolences to the friends and family of X-ray astronomer and Nobel laureate Professor Riccardo Giacconi, who has died at the age of 87 Prof. Giacconi pursued the study of X-ray astronomy, developing...

Members of the RAS Council are elected by ballot of the Fellowship, with the result announced at the Annual General Meeting that in 2019 will be held on Friday 10 May . I invite you to submit nominations , or to consider having yourself nominated,...

The UK team returned this week from the 10-day long 12 th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) in Beijing, having won 2 Silver medals and 2 Honourable Mentions. Started in 2006, the International Olympiad on Astronomy and...

For the first time astronomers have detected gravitational waves from a merged, hyper-massive neutron star. The scientists, Maurice van Putten of Sejong University in South Korea, and Massimo della Valle of the Osservatorio Astronomico de Capodimonte...

Solving a decades-old mystery, an international team of astronomers have discovered an extremely hot magnetosphere around a white dwarf, a remnant of a star like our Sun. The work was led by Dr Nicole Reindl, Research Fellow of the Royal Commission...

A team of astronomers from Israel, the U.S. and Russia have identified a disrupted galaxy resembling a giant tadpole, complete with an elliptical head and a long, straight tail, about 300 million light years away from Earth. The galaxy is one million...