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The Vera C Rubin Observatory, a new scientific facility that will bring the night sky to life like never before using the largest camera ever built, has revealed its ‘first look’ images at the start of its 10-year survey of the cosmos. The Rubin Observatory , jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US...

The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2025 is awarded in equal shares to John Richard Bond, Professor of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and University Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada and George Efstathiou, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, UK for their pioneering research...

Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or...

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has been powered down, after more than a decade spent gathering data that are now being used to unravel the secrets of our home galaxy. On 27 March 2025, Gaia’s control team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre switched off the spacecraft’s subsystems and sent it into a ‘...