Three potentially habitable worlds found around nearby ultracool dwarf star
02 May 2016Three Earth-sized planets have been discovered orbiting a dim and cool star, and may be the best place to search for life beyond the Solar System.
Winds a quarter the speed of light spotted leaving mysterious binary systems
27 April 2016Astronomers have observed two black holes in nearby galaxies devouring their companion stars at an extremely high rate, and spitting out matter at a quarter the speed of light.
Map of rocky exoplanet reveals a lava world
30 March 2016The most detailed map of a small, rocky ‘super Earth’ to date reveals a planet almost completely covered by lava, with a molten ‘hot’ side and solid ‘cool’ side.
Astronomers witness assembly of galaxies in the early Universe for the first time
22 July 2015An international team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge have detected the most distant clouds of star-forming gas yet found in normal galaxies in the early Universe – less than one billion years after the Big Bang. The new observations will allow astronomers to start to see how the first galaxies were built up and how they cleared the cosmic fog during the era of reionisation. This is the first time that such galaxies have been seen as more than just faint blobs.
‘Sunscreen’ layer detected on distant planet
12 June 2015On a blazing-hot exoplanet known as WASP-33b, a team of astronomers including researchers from the University of Cambridge has detected a stratosphere, one of the primary layers of Earth’s atmosphere.
Planck reveals first stars were born late
05 February 2015New maps from the Planck satellite uncover the ‘polarised’ light from the early Universe across the entire sky, revealing that the first stars formed much later than previously thought.
Galactic ‘hailstorm’ in the early Universe
16 January 2015Astronomers have been able to peer back to the young Universe to determine how quasars – powered by supermassive black holes with the mass of a billion suns – form and shape the evolution of galaxies.
First sightings of solar flare phenomena confirm 3D models of space weather
27 March 2014Video of magnetic field lines “slipping reconnection” bring scientists a step closer to predicting when and where large flares will occur.
Work begins on world’s most powerful radio telescope
04 November 2013This week, work begins on the next phase of development for the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope, with the University of Cambridge leading major ‘work packages’.
Opening of new centre for experimental astrophysics at Cambridge
25 October 2013A new building on the Institute of Astronomy site off Madingley Road will complete the consolidation of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology on a single site in Cambridge.
