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X-ray view of the Perseus cluster

Dead satellite finds a calm centre at the heart of brightest galaxy cluster in the sky

06 Jul 2016

With its very first – and last – observation, the Hitomi x-ray observatory has discovered that the gas in the Perseus cluster of galaxies is much...

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Computer simulations motivated by GW150914

Using gravitational waves to catch runaway black holes

30 Jun 2016

Black holes are the most powerful gravitational force in the Universe. So what could cause them to be kicked out of their host galaxies? Cambridge...

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Artist’s impression of the distant galaxy SXDF-NB1006-2

Astronomers observe most distant oxygen ever

16 Jun 2016

An international team of astronomers have detected glowing oxygen in a distant galaxy seen just 700 million years after the Big Bang. This is the...

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An artist's impression of a hypernova, an explosive death of a star roughly ten times more energetic than a normal supernova.

Ancient stars at the centre of the Milky Way contain ‘fingerprints’ from the very early Universe

11 Nov 2015

Astronomers have discovered some of the oldest stars in the galaxy, whose chemical composition and movements could tell us what the Universe was like...

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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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The central object is a very distant galaxy, labelled BDF 3299. The bright red cloud just to the lower left is the ALMA detection of a vast cloud of material that is in the process of assembling the very young galaxy

Astronomers witness assembly of galaxies in the early Universe for the first time

22 Jul 2015

An international team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge have detected the most distant clouds of star-forming gas yet found in normal...

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Left: Image of HD 115600 showing a bright debris ring viewed nearly edge-on and located just beyond a Pluto-like distance to the star. Right: A model of the HD 115600 debris ring on the same scale.

Discovery shows what the solar system looked like as a ‘toddler’

27 May 2015

Astronomers have discovered a disc of planetary debris surrounding a young sun-like star that shares remarkable similarities with the Kuiper Belt...

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Artist’s impression of one of the possible galaxy strangulation mechanisms: star-forming galaxies (fed by gas inflows) are accreted into a massive hot halo, which ‘strangles’ them and leads to their death.

Cause of galactic death: strangulation

13 May 2015

Astronomers have partially solved an epic whodunit: what kills galaxies so that they can no longer produce new stars?

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The dwarf galaxies are located near the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, at the centre of the image.

Welcome to the neighbourhood: new dwarf galaxies discovered in orbit around the Milky Way

10 Mar 2015

Astronomers have discovered a ‘treasure trove’ of rare dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way. The discoveries could hold the key to...

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Celestial bodies

04 Feb 2015

Astronomy and oncology do not make obvious bedfellows, but the search for new stars and galaxies has surprising similarities with the search for...

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Illustration of the outflow (red) and gas flowing in to the quasar in the centre (blue). The cold clumps shown in the inset image are expelled out of the galaxy in a 'galactic hailstorm'

Galactic ‘hailstorm’ in the early Universe

16 Jan 2015

Astronomers have been able to peer back to the young Universe to determine how quasars – powered by supermassive black holes with the mass of a...

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An artist’s impression of a Type Ia supernova – the explosion of a white dwarf locked in a binary system with a companion star.

Gaia discovers its first supernova

12 Sep 2014

While scanning the sky to measure the positions and movements of stars in our Galaxy, Gaia has discovered its first stellar explosion in another...

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