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Artist’s impression of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope.

Farewell, Gaia: spacecraft operations come to an end

27 Mar 2025

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has been powered down, after more than a decade spent gathering data that are now being used to unravel...

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Cambridge Festival Speaker Spotlight: Professor Hiranya Peiris

06 Mar 2025

Hiranya Peiris holds the Professorship of Astronomy (1909) at Cambridge, the first woman to do so in the 115-year history of this prestigious chair...

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Cambridge Festival Speaker Spotlight: Dr Matt Bothwell

12 Feb 2025

Dr Matthew Bothwell is an astrophysicist, science communicator and author, and the current Public Astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy...

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Galaxy NGC 1549, seen today and 13 billion years ago

‘Inside-out’ galaxy growth observed in the early universe

11 Oct 2024

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the ‘inside-out’ growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700...

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Deep field image from JWST

Earliest detection of metal challenges what we know about the first galaxies

06 Jun 2024

Astronomers have detected carbon in a galaxy just 350 million years after the Big Bang, the earliest detection of any element in the universe other...

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Artist's impression of the ANDES instrument

New instrument to search for signs of life on other planets

05 Jun 2024

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has signed an agreement for the design and construction of ANDES , the ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle...

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The environment of the galaxy system ZS7 from the JWST PRIMER programme as seen by Webb's NIRCam instrument.

Webb detects most distant black hole merger to date

16 May 2024

An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, has used the James Webb Space Telescope to find evidence for an ongoing...

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False-colour JWST image of a small fraction of the GOODS South field, with JADES-GS-z7-01-QU highlighted

Astronomers spot oldest ‘dead’ galaxy yet observed

06 Mar 2024

A galaxy that suddenly stopped forming new stars more than 13 billion years ago has been observed by astronomers.

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Artist's impression of the surroundings of the supermassive black hole in NGC 3783

Neon sign identified by JWST gives clue to planet formation

05 Mar 2024

The winds that help to form planets in the gaseous discs of early solar systems have been imaged for the first time by the James Webb Space Telescope...

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This image shows the galaxy EGSY8p7, a bright galaxy in the early Universe where light emission is seen from, among other things, excited hydrogen atoms – Lyman-α emission.

Galaxy mergers solve early Universe mystery

18 Jan 2024

A team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, has used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to reveal, for the first time, what...

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The GN-z11 galaxy, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Astronomers detect oldest black hole ever observed

17 Jan 2024

Researchers have discovered the oldest black hole ever observed, dating from the dawn of the universe, and found that it is ‘eating’ its host galaxy...

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Sunrise over Venus

Mysterious missing component in the clouds of Venus revealed

09 Jan 2024

Researchers may have identified the missing component in the chemistry of the Venusian clouds that would explain their colour and 'splotchiness' in...

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