Topic description and stories

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.

Read more
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...

Read more
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...

Read more

Gaia view of Omega Centauri

Latest Gaia data release reveals rare lenses, cluster cores and unforeseen science

10 Oct 2023

The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has released a goldmine of knowledge about our galaxy and beyond. Among other findings, the star surveyor...

Read more
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...

Read more
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.

Read more

This infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was taken for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, programme.

Early universe crackled with bursts of star formation, Webb Telescope shows

06 Jun 2023

Among the most fundamental questions in astronomy is: How did the first stars and galaxies form? The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a partnership...

Read more
Blue, green and red colours, according to velocities derived from the WEAVE spectra, are overlaid on a composite image of Stephan’s Quintet.

UK-led robotic sky scanner reveals its first galactic fingerprint

12 Dec 2022

A major telescope upgrade has peered through to the distant Universe to reveal the spectra of a pair of galaxies 280 million light years away from...

Read more
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

Read more

Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have taken advantage of gravitational lensing to reveal the largest sample of the faintest and earliest known galaxies in the universe.

Non-detection of key signal allows astronomers to determine what the first galaxies were – and weren’t – like

28 Nov 2022

Researchers have been able to make some key determinations about the first galaxies to exist, in one of the first astrophysical studies of the period...

Read more
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) by night

Slow spin of early galaxy observed for the first time

01 Jul 2022

One of the most distant known galaxies, observed in the very earliest years of the Universe, appears to be rotating at less than a quarter of the...

Read more

Largest chemical map of the Milky Way unveiled

13 Jun 2022

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission has released a new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy, including stellar DNA, asymmetric...

Read more

Pages