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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...
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...
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...
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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 the...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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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...
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...