News

A team of astronomers has found that Venus has never been habitable, despite decades of speculation that our closest planetary neighbour was once much more like Earth than it is today. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, studied the chemical composition of the Venusian atmosphere and inferred that its...

Two exceptional female astrophysicists will take up Master’s degree places at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge this month as the first recipients of The Parasol Foundation Scholarship. This new award is launched by Murray Edwards College in partnership with Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy to encourage more...

Interferometry of stunning spiral arms around young star reveals gravity’s hand in planet formation Traditionally, planet formation has been described as a “bottom-up” process, as dust grains gradually collect into bigger conglomerations over tens of millions of years: from microns, to centimeters, to meters, to kilometers...

An international team (including IoA astronomers Laura Rogers and Amy Bonsor) have recently found hundreds of “polluted” white dwarf stars in our home galaxy, the Milky Way. These are white dwarfs caught actively consuming planets in their orbit. They are a valuable resource for studying the interiors of these distant...