Institute of Astronomy

News and Press Releases

Double star system flips planet-forming disk into pole position

Published on 15/01/2019 

New research involving IoA researchers has found the first confirmed example of a double star system that has flipped its surrounding disc to a position that leaps over the orbital plane of those stars. The international team of astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) to obtain high-resolution images of the Asteroid belt-sized disc.
 

Dark Energy Survey completes six-year mission

Published on 08/01/2019 

After scanning in depth about a quarter of the southern skies for six years and cataloguing hundreds of millions of distant galaxies, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) will finish taking data on January 9 2019.

Sapphires and Rubies in the Sky

Published on 19/12/2018 

Researchers at the Universities of Zurich and Cambridge have discovered a new, exotic class of planets outside our solar system. These so-called super-Earths were formed at high temperatures close to their host star and contain high quantities of calcium, aluminium and their oxides - including sapphire and ruby.

Why are young planetary systems so rich in gas?

Published on 11/12/2018 

A new study by an international team (including IoA researchers) may have shed light on a long-standing mystery of planet formation: why are young planetary systems so rich in gas?

Giant planets around young star raise questions about how planets form

Published on 22/10/2018 

 

Researchers have identified a young star with four Jupiter and Saturn-sized planets in orbit around it, the first time that so many massive planets have been detected in such a young system. 

The system has also set a new record for the most extreme range of orbits yet observed: the outermost planet is more than a thousand times further from the star than the innermost one, which raises interesting questions about how such a system might have formed.