National recognition for astronomers from Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Perth.
- Galactic winds stopped big galaxies from growing, Dr Rebecca Davies, Swinburne University
- How the Milky Way and its neighbours have evolved, Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths, ANU
- Models of galaxy formation across cosmic epochs, Associate Professor Claudia Lagos, ICRAR/ UWA
- Detecting gravitational waves with pulsars, Dr Matthew Miles, Swinburne University (now at Vanderbilt University, USA)
- Cosmic pulses and stellar bursts: a tool for decoding radio transients, Dr Joshua Preston Pritchard, CSIRO
- Our wandering neighbours – the Hercules stream, Li Yusen, ANU.
The Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA) honours six astronomers at its Annual Scientific Meeting in Adelaide this week.
“Our 2025 prize winners are investigating how galaxies form and evolve, and developing new tools to explore the cosmos. They are working with some of the most remarkable instruments created by humanity, and they’re demonstrating the strength of Australian astronomy on the world stage,” says ASA President Professor Stas Shabala.
For interviews, contact Niall Byrne, niall@scienceinpublic.com.au, 0417 131 977 and visit www.scienceinpublic.com.au
Supporting photos and social media tiles are available in Dropbox.
Galactic winds stopped big galaxies from growing in the early Universe
For years, astronomers have observed that powerful winds, known as galactic outflows, are blown out from galaxies by exploding stars and supermassive black holes. These winds are thought to be key to shaping galaxies by ejecting gas that would otherwise form new stars. However, when observed primarily through electrically charged gas, these winds appeared surprisingly weak.
Dr Rebecca Davies used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to look back 10 billion years and study the neutral phase of galactic outflows in 60 massive galaxies in the early Universe, just when star formation was stopping.
Rebecca found that at least half of these massive galaxies drive gas outflows, and the outflows expel neutral gas up to 100 times faster than it is converted into stars. This means these outflows were likely powerful enough to rapidly quench star formation in their host galaxies.
Her findings, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, demonstrate that JWST can be used to study the previously undetectable neutral phase of distant outflows, and challenge previous studies of outflows at Cosmic Noon: 2 billion to 4 billion years after the Big Bang. Rebecca is now leading a new James Webb observing program to directly measure how these gas outflows deplete the cold gas needed for star formation.
Dr Rebecca Davies (Swinburne University) is winner of the Astronomical Society of Australia’s Louise Webster Prize for Outstanding Research by a Scientist Early in their Post-Doctoral Career. rdavies@swin.edu.au
How the Milky Way and its neighbours have evolved
Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths is Australia’s pre-eminent expert on atomic hydrogen gas distribution and evolution in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and its neighbours, the Magellanic Clouds.
Her seminal work, based on high-fidelity observational surveys undertaken with Australia’s radio telescope facilities, includes the discovery of a new spiral arm within the Milky Way, the first detection of neutral gas outflowing from the nucleus of the galaxy, and the pioneering demonstration of the importance of magnetic fields in the flow of matter into the Galactic disc.
Naomi is also a co-Principal Investigator on two major observational surveys underway with the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP): the Galactic ASKAP survey (GASKAP) and the Polarisation Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM)
Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths (Australian National University) is winner of the Astronomical Society of Australia’s Ellery Lectureship for Outstanding Contributions to Astronomy.
naomi.mcclure-griffiths@anu.edu.au
Models of galaxy formation across cosmic epochs
Associate Professor Claudia Lagos is a world leader in modelling the formation of galaxies. She is the main developer of SHARK, an influential open-source semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, which has led to breakthroughs in our understanding of the complex physics that governs galaxy formation and evolution.
It has been used to address two outstanding problems in extragalactic astrophysics: the mysterious nature of highly dusty galaxies and how to explain the high abundance of very massive galaxies in the early Universe, when it appears too young for these galaxies to have formed.
Associate Professor Claudia Lagos ((International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research/The University of Western Australia) is winner of the Astronomical Society of Australia’s Anne Green Prize for a Significant Advance or Accomplishment by a Mid-Career Scientist.
Claudia.lagos@uwa.edu.au
Detecting gravitational waves with pulsar timing
Dr Matthew Miles’ pioneering work explores the use of pulsar timing arrays as galactic-scale gravitational wave detectors.
His prize-winning thesis, “Millisecond pulsar timing and gravitational wave searches with the MeerKAT radio telescope” makes a significant discovery of a rare “mode changing” phenomenon in a precisely timed millisecond pulsar and develops a method to account for it. This has substantially improved timing accuracy.
Matthew’s research also produced the first data release for the MeerKAT pulsar timing array, laying crucial groundwork for future gravitational wave detections with next-generation facilities like MeerKAT and the Square Kilometre
Dr Matthew Miles (Swinburne University, now Vanderbilt University, USA) is winner of the Astronomical Society of Australia’s Charlene Heisler Prize for Outstanding PhD Thesis. matt.t.miles22@gmail.com
Cosmic pulses and stellar bursts: a tool for decoding radio transients
Dr Joshua Preston Pritchard is the sole designer and developer of DStools, a processing pipeline package specifically designed for radio interferometric data. Since its 2024 release, DStools has already been instrumental in at least five refereed publications in high-impact journals, including Nature and Nature Astronomy.
The package is an outstanding contribution to open-source astronomical software, which constructs and analyses dynamic spectra, providing an incredibly rich source of information for studying short-timescale radio variables and transients.
Dr Joshua Preston Pritchard (CSIRO) is the winner of the Astronomical Society of Australia’s Emerging Leaders in Astronomy Software Development Prize sponsored by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).
joshua.pritchard@csiro.au
Our wandering neighbours – the Hercules stream
A group of stars, the Hercules stream, are in our solar neighbourhood but heading on a very different track to our sun, and most stars in the Milky Way.
Li Yusen has confirmed that this stream of stars originated with the ‘bar structure’ at the heart of the Milky Way and are now heading out towards the edges of our galaxy.
His Honours thesis, Orbital dynamics in barred Milky Way: the dynamical and chemical origin of the Hercules stream, led to two original, published papers—an impressive feat for an Honours student.
His research presented a straightforward picture on the orbital level of the origin of the Hercules stream. He used a dynamical approach to confirm the favoured scenario that the Hercules stars are on very large but stable orbits that bring stars out from the inner galaxy to pass through the solar neighbourhood and showed that these stars share chemical properties consistent with this scenario.
The solar neighbourhood comprises more than 8 million stars within 3000 light years of our solar system. About a quarter of those neighbourhood stars are in the Hercules stream.
Li Yusen (ANU) is the winner of the Astronomical Society of Australia’s Bok Prize for Outstanding Research by an Honours Student or eligible Masters Student.
li.yusen.astr@gmail.com