Who has the darkest skies? Tell us what you can see on the longest night, help us map Australia’s light pollution, and set a world record Stunning video overlay and photos, spokespeople in all States and Territories Background information Images and captions Video footage Scientists are asking all Australians to step outside on the longest…
Unusual galaxy set to prompt rethink on how structures in the Universe form Full paper, Full video, and images available. Details below. Astronomers have captured an image of a super-rare type of galaxy – described as a “cosmic ring of fire” – as it existed 11 billion years ago. The galaxy, which has roughly the mass of…
Full paper available here, read on for media release, photos, captions and background information. Modelling shows big galaxies get bigger by merging with smaller ones Galaxies grow large by eating their smaller neighbours, new research reveals. Exactly how massive galaxies attain their size is poorly understood, not least because they swell over billions of years….
Lisa Kewley has transformed our understanding of the early years of the Universe, the development of galaxies, and what happens when they collide. For her pioneering investigations across theory, modelling and observation, she will receive the US National Academy of Science’s biennial James Craig Watson Medal in Washington DC. “At school I thought physics…
Analysis finds gender equity among star scientists improving, but big challenges remain. Ensuring research opportunities for indigenous, disabled and LGBTQ astronomers is essential if Australian research is to succeed in the new era of “mega-telescopes”, a major analysis has found. In a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Professor Lisa Kewley, director of the…
Analysis finds gender equity among star scientists improving, but big challenges remain. Ensuring research opportunities for indigenous, disabled and LGBTQ astronomers is essential if Australian research is to succeed in the new era of “mega-telescopes”, a major analysis has found. In a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Professor Lisa Kewley, director of the…
Data gathered by NASA’s now defunct Kepler telescope provides a solution to an astronomical mystery. Star-quakes recorded by NASA’s Kepler space telescope have helped answer a long-standing question about the age of the “thick disc” of the Milky Way. In a paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team…
Sky survey provides clues to how they change over time. The direction in which a galaxy spins depends on its mass, researchers have found. A team of astrophysicists analysed 1418 galaxies and found that small ones are likely to spin on a different axis to large ones. The rotation was measured in relation to each…
Researchers find evidence of a cataclysmic flare that punched so far out of the Galaxy its impact was felt 200,000 light years away. A titanic, expanding beam of energy sprang from close to the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way just 3.5 million years ago, sending a cone-shaped burst of radiation…
Researchers hunt for a 12-billion-year-old signal that marks the end of the post Big Bang “dark age”. Astronomers are closing in on a signal that has been travelling across the Universe for 12 billion years, bringing them nearer to understanding the life and death of the very earliest stars. In a paper on the preprint…