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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 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...

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...

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...