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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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Pablo's Galaxy

Astronomers detect black hole ‘starving’ its host galaxy to death

12 Sep 2024

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel...

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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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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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Artist's impression of the predicted collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda

Dark energy could be measured by studying the galaxy next door

14 Aug 2023

Researchers have found a new way to measure dark energy – the mysterious force that makes up more than two-thirds of the universe and is responsible...

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The image shows a deep galaxy field, featuring thousands of galaxies of various shapes and sizes. A cutout indicates a particular galaxy, known as JADES-GS-z6, which was a research target for this result. It appears as a blurry smudge of blue, red and green.

Webb sees carbon-rich dust grains in the first billion years of cosmic time

19 Jul 2023

For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope has observed the chemical signature of carbon-rich dust grains in the early universe.

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A new map of the dark matter made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The orange regions show where there is more mass; purple where there is less. The typical features are hundreds of millions of light years across. The grey/white shows where contaminating light from dust in our Milky Way galaxy, measured by the Planck satellite, obscures a deeper view.

New findings that map the universe’s cosmic growth support Einstein’s theory of gravity

11 Apr 2023

A new image reveals the most detailed map of dark matter distributed across a quarter of the entire sky, reaching deep into the cosmos.

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This image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope highlights the region of study by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES).

Webb telescope reaches new milestone in its search for distant galaxies

09 Dec 2022

New findings confirm that JWST has surpassed the Hubble telescope in its ability to observe the early Universe

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A pin being pushed into a bubble, in which there is an image of the Universe

Can cosmic inflation be ruled out?

03 Nov 2022

Astrophysicists say that cosmic inflation – a point in the Universe’s infancy when space-time expanded exponentially, and what physicists really...

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