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It's almost one year since the launch of the bicentennial quilt project. A lot has happened in that time and we've suffered a few setbacks along the way but through it all we have consistently been amazed by people's support, enthusiasm and creative...

This month's episode of RAS Supermassive is packed! Join Izzie Clarke and Dr Becky Smethurst as they travel through our solar system; where exactly have we sent probes and rovers? Plus, they speak with Professor Jane Greaves, the scientist behind...

Astronomers have shown that water vapour can potentially be detected above impenetrable clouds in the atmospheres of exoplanets, with a cutting-edge technique described in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The new method...

Dr Sheila Kanani, the RAS Education, Outreach and Diversity Officer, has won the 2020 Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement with Planetary Science. Sheila is a planetary physicist, broadcaster, comedian, author and teacher, with a background in...

An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, today announced the discovery of a rare molecule – phosphine – in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially, or by microbes that thrive...

On 14 September 2020, astronomers announced the detection of phosphine, a potential biomarker, in the atmosphere of Venus. Here are ten essential facts about the discovery: What has been discovered? A molecule called phosphine has been detected in...

New light has been shed on a mysterious and long-standing conundrum at the very heart of our galaxy. The new work offers a potential solution to the so-called ‘Galactic bar paradox’, whereby different observations produce contradictory estimates of...

With many conferences cancelled this year, the Royal Astronomical Society are organising an online poster exhibition from 14 September to give early career researchers (ECRs) the opportunity to showcase their work publicly on the RAS website. The...

The question of how small, dwarf galaxies have sustained the formation of new stars over the course of the Universe has long confounded the world’s astronomers. Now, an international research team has found that dormant small galaxies can slowly...

Part of our bicentenary celebrations, the RAS Supermassive podcast celebrates the best of astronomy and geophysics. Join astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst and science journalist Izzie Clarke to hear about the latest research, the people and...

The results of the recent survey about how to run the RAS Ordinary Meetings in the 2020-2021 session are in. We had a total of 905 responses, and the main outcomes are summarised below: 97% were quite or very interested in attending online Ordinary...

An exploding white dwarf star blasted itself out of its orbit with another star in a ‘partial supernova’ and is now hurtling across our galaxy, according to a new study from the University of Warwick and reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the...