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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. Manuscripts...
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...
Illustration of the Milky Way's proposed merger history
Family tree of the Milky Way deciphered
Scientists have known for some time that galaxies can grow by the merging of smaller galaxies, but the ancestry of our own Milky Way galaxy has been a long-standing mystery. Now, an international team of astrophysicists has succeeded in...
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...
A galaxy surrounded by a coloured haze, with lenses due to gravitational distortion
Seeing dark matter in a new light
A small team of astronomers have found a new way to ‘see’ the elusive dark matter haloes that surround galaxies, with a new technique 10 times more precise than the previous-best method. The work is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal...
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...
Books in the RAS library
Call for nominations - RAS Thesis Prizes 2021
Each year the RAS recognises the best PhD theses in astronomy and geophysics completed in the UK. Three prizes are available: the Michael Penston prize for astronomy, the Keith Runcorn prize for geophysics, and the Patricia Tomkins prize for...
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Single burst of star formation created Milky Way’s central bulge
New research has found that the majority of stars in our galaxy’s central bulge formed in a single burst of star formation more than 10 billion years ago. To reach this conclusion, astronomers surveyed millions of stars across 200 square degrees of...
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 hoping to send...
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...
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...