Journal News | The Royal Astronomical Society

Trails caused by the fifth deployment of satellites making up the Starlink constellation.

Satellites contribute significant light pollution to night skies

Scientists reported new research results today suggesting that artificial objects in orbit around the Earth are brightening night skies on our planet significantly more than previously understood. The research, accepted for publication in Monthly…

Image of a spiral galaxy surrounded by a blue cloud representing the dark matter halo

New study suggests supermassive black holes could form from dark matter

A new theoretical study has proposed a novel mechanism for the creation of supermassive black holes from dark matter. The international team find that rather than the conventional formation scenarios involving ‘normal’ matter, supermassive black hole…

Two views of a 3D reconstruction of the Crab nebula

Spectacular ‘honeycomb heart’ revealed in iconic stellar explosion

A unique ‘heart-shape’, with wisps of gas filaments showing an intricate honeycomb-like arrangement, has been discovered at the centre of the iconic supernova remnant, the Crab Nebula. Astronomers have mapped the void in unprecedented detail, creatin…

RAS thanks GJI Outstanding Reviewers 2020

The RAS expresses its thanks to 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 performed by…

Publishing now and in the future

Stacks of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

200 years of the RAS: Publishing progress

The RAS has been publishing scientific research for almost 200 years. In a new exploration of our publishing history in A&G, assistant editors Bella Lock and Louise Alexander review how the Society's world-class journals began and evolved. Read…

Image of two radio galaxies overlaid on an optical image of the sky.

Cosmic beasts and where to find them

Two giant radio galaxies have been discovered with South Africa's powerful MeerKAT telescope. These galaxies are thought to be amongst the largest single objects in the Universe. The discovery has been published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal…

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…

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 reconstructin…

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 Astronomi…

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 s…

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…