Institute of Astronomy

News and Press Releases

New from Webb Telescope: An Exoplanet Atmosphere as Never Seen Before

Published on 22/11/2022 

Known for beaming stunning images back to Earth, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world’s skies. 

Gaia Collaboration to Receive 2023 Berkeley Prize

Published on 09/11/2022 

The Gaia collaboration, which is responsible for the spacecraft that is currently building the largest and most precise three-dimensional map of our galaxy, will receive the 2023 Lancelot M. Berkeley − New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy.

Dust plumes observed being pushed into interstellar space by intense starlight

Published on 13/10/2022 

Astronomers have observed directly for the first time how intense light from stars can ‘push’ matter.

The Milky Way Galaxy - From Beginning to End

Published on 29/09/2022 

What we call the Milky Way, our Galaxy, has been the focus of myth, story and study in every society with a recorded history for millennia. Understanding its structure defeated Isaac Newton.  One hundred years ago it was realized  that the Milky Way is just one amongst a Universe of galaxies.

Astronomers develop novel way to ‘see’ the first stars through the fog of the early Universe

Published on 21/07/2022 

A team of astronomers has developed a method that will allow them to ‘see’ through the fog of the early Universe and detect light from the first stars and galaxies.

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have developed a methodology that will allow them to observe and study the first stars through the clouds of hydrogen that filled the Universe about 378,000 years after the Big Bang.