Research Highlights

Side-by-side images of the planet Mars
Martian global dust storm ended winter early in the south
A dust storm that engulfed the entire Red Planet in 2018 destroyed a vortex of cold air around the Martian south pole and brought an early spring to the hemisphere. By contrast, the storm caused only minor distortions to the polar vortex in the...
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Unravelling the knotty problem of the Sun’s activity
A new approach to analysing the development of magnetic tangles on the Sun has led to a breakthrough in a longstanding debate about how solar energy is injected into the solar atmosphere before being released into space, causing space weather events...
An image of Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, made with the Hubble Space Telescope
Supermassive black holes put a brake on stellar births
Black holes with masses equivalent to millions of suns do put a brake on the birth of new stars, say astronomers. Using machine learning and three state of the art simulations to back up results from a large sky survey, the researchers resolve a 20...
Image of a supernova remnant, with different areas of gas and dust highlighted in different colours
Cosmic rays help supernovae explosions pack a bigger punch
The final stage of cataclysmic explosions of dying massive stars, called supernovae, could pack an up to six times bigger punch on the surrounding interstellar gas with the help of cosmic rays, according to a new study led by researchers at the...
Image showing blue fragments of a comet breaking up
Tail without a comet: the dusty remains of Comet ATLAS
A serendipitous flythrough of the tail of a disintegrated comet has offered scientists a unique opportunity to study these remarkable structures, in new research presented today at the National Astronomy Meeting 2021. Comet ATLAS fragmented just...
Artist's depiction of a blue neutron star surrounded by plasma tracing magnetic field lines
A bug’s life: millimetre-tall mountains on neutron stars
New models of neutron stars show that their tallest mountains may be only fractions of millimetres high, due to the huge gravity on the ultra-dense objects. The research is presented today at the National Astronomy Meeting 2021. Neutron stars are...
An illustration of material being ejected from the Sun (left) interacting with the magnetosphere of the Earth (right)
Planetary Shields Will Buckle Under Stellar Winds From Their Dying Stars
Any life identified on planets orbiting white dwarf stars almost certainly evolved after the star’s death, says a new study led by the University of Warwick that reveals the consequences of the intense and furious stellar winds that will batter a...
A poster for the short film Beyond Visible Noise
Beyond Visible Noise: the ‘sounds of space’ on film
Space scientists, spoken word artists and filmmakers teamed up to create a new short film, ‘Beyond Visible Noise’, that will launch at the National Astronomy Meeting on Tuesday 20 July. Dr Martin Archer of Imperial College London will describe how...
Artist's impression of a free-floating planet
Kepler telescope glimpses population of free-floating planets
Tantalising evidence has been uncovered for a mysterious population of “free-floating” planets, planets that may be alone in deep space, unbound to any host star. The results include four new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar...
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New observations of the most distant galaxies close in on cosmic dawn
New observations of six of the most distant galaxies currently known have helped to pinpoint the moment of first light in the Universe, known as ‘cosmic dawn’. The new work is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and puts a...
Side-by-side artist's impressions of Kepler 422-b and Earth
Earth-like biospheres on other planets may be rare
A new analysis of known exoplanets has revealed that Earth-like conditions on potentially habitable planets may be much rarer than previously thought. The work focuses on the conditions required for oxygen-based photosynthesis to develop on a planet...
Artist's impression of a small blue star accreting material from its much larger yellow binary companion
Mysterious hydrogen-free supernova sheds light on stars’ violent death throes
A curiously yellow pre-supernova star has caused astrophysicists to re-evaluate what’s possible at the deaths of our Universe’s most massive stars. The team describe the peculiar star and its resulting supernova in a new study published today in...