Topic description and stories

Artist’s impression of a runaway star

Fastest stars in the Milky Way are ‘runaways’ from another galaxy

05 Jul 2017

A group of astronomers have shown that the fastest-moving stars in our galaxy – which are travelling so fast that they can escape the Milky Way – are...

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Icy ring around young planetary system has similar chemical fingerprint to our solar system

18 May 2017

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, has made the most detailed image of the ring of dusty...

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Gaia’s first sky map

Gaia results revealed – first data release from the most detailed map ever made of the sky

14 Sep 2016

The first results from the Gaia satellite, which is completing an unprecedented census of more than one billion stars in the Milky Way, are being...

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Artist's impression of dark matter clumps around a Milky Way-like galaxy

Massive holes ‘punched’ through a trail of stars likely caused by dark matter

07 Sep 2016

The discovery of two massive holes punched through a stream of stars could help answer questions about the nature of dark matter, the mysterious...

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Artist’s impression of the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 from the surface of one of its planets

New exoplanet think tank will ask the big questions about extra-terrestrial worlds

05 Sep 2016

An international exoplanet ‘think tank’ is meeting this week in Cambridge to deliberate on the ten most important questions that humanity could...

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Artist’s impression of the disc and outflow around the massive young star

Astronomers identify a young heavyweight star in the Milky Way

22 Aug 2016

A young star over 30 times more massive than the Sun could help us understand how the most extreme stars in the Universe are born.

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Illustration of the dust ring surrounding HD 181327

First evidence of icy comets orbiting a sun-like star

19 May 2016

Astronomers have found the first evidence of comets around a star similar to the sun, providing an opportunity to study what our solar system was...

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Artist’s impression of the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 from the surface of one of its planets.

Three potentially habitable worlds found around nearby ultracool dwarf star

02 May 2016

Three 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.

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Artist’s impression depicting a compact object – either a black hole or a neutron star – feeding on gas from a companion star in a binary system.

Winds a quarter the speed of light spotted leaving mysterious binary systems

27 Apr 2016

Astronomers have observed two black holes in nearby galaxies devouring their companion stars at an extremely high rate, and spitting out matter at a...

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Artist’s impression of a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting its nearby star

Exoplanet hunter: in search of new Earths and life in the Universe

15 Feb 2016

In 1995, in Geneva, PhD student Didier Queloz discovered a planet orbiting another sun – something that astronomers had predicted, but never found...

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Detail from animation of a black hole devouring a star

How to escape a black hole

26 Nov 2015

An international team of astrophysicists, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, has observed a new way for gas to escape the...

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Two ‘twin’ stars with identical spectra observed by the La Silla Telescope. Since it is known that one star is 40 parsecs away, the difference in their apparent brightnesses allows calculation of the second star’s distance

Using stellar ‘twins’ to reach the outer limits of the galaxy

04 Sep 2015

A new method of measuring the distances between stars enables astronomers to climb the ‘cosmic ladder’ and understand the processes at work in the...

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