Are we alone? University and EnduroSat join up in search for life among the stars
Alpha Centauri tantalisingly close to look for extra-terrestrial life Led by Professor Peter Tuthill, the TOLIMAN mission to search for planets capable of hosting life around Alpha Centauri has taken a step forward, engaging EnduroSat to take our technology into orbit. The University of Sydney has signed a contract with EnduroSat, a leading provider of …
A dark stream sheds new light on the life of galaxies
“Galactic cannibalism is how our universe grows” An international team of scientists led by a University of Sydney astrophysicist has discovered evidence the Andromeda galaxy is a cannibal growing through colossal intermittent feasts. The research, which is available on the pre-print server arXiv and will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical …
Alien megastructures? Cosmic thumbprint? What’s behind a James Webb telescope photo that had even astronomers stumped
In July, a puzzling new image of a distant extreme star system surrounded by surreal concentric geometric rungs had even astronomers scratching their heads. The picture, which looks like a kind of “cosmic thumbprint”, came from the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s newest flagship observatory. The internet immediately lit up with theories and speculation. Some …
Milky Way’s graveyard of dead stars found
A study creates the first map of our galaxy’s ancient dead stars In the first map of the ‘galactic underworld’, a study from the University of Sydney has revealed a graveyard that stretches three times the height of the Milky Way. It has also indicated where the dead stars lie. The first map of the …
Measuring reliable stellar abundances towards crowded regions using MUSE
With the rapid development of stellar spectroscopy in the past decade, many stellar spectroscopic surveys, for example LAMOST, GALAH and APOGEE, combined with the astrometric information of Gaia have played a pivotal role in explaining the chemo-dynamic evolution of the Milky Way. By extracting the elemental abundances and ages of millions of stars from the …
Australian-based astronomers to take a deep dive into the cosmos with time awarded on one of ESO’s most powerful instruments
Two teams of astronomers led by The University of Sydney and by The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR/UWA) have recently each been awarded substantial amounts of observing time on one of the most in-demand instruments at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) – the Multi Unit Spectroscopic …
This newly discovered neutron star might light the way for a whole new class of stellar object
The discovery of a neutron star emitting unusual radio signals is rewriting our understanding of these unique star systems. My colleagues and I (the MeerTRAP team) made the discovery when observing the Vela-X 1 region of the Milky Way about 1,300 light years away from Earth, using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. We spotted a …
Event Horizon Telescope set to reveal ‘exciting results’ about the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
There’s a monster lurking in the heart of our galaxy, and we may get our first glimpses of it tonight. At 11pm AEST, an international team of scientists will reveal what they’re calling a “groundbreaking” discovery from our galactic centre — and you’ll be able to watch it live. There are rumbles the Event Horizon Telescope …
We’ve used a new technique to discover the brightest radio pulsar outside our own galaxy
When a star explodes and dies in a supernova, it takes on a new life of sorts. Pulsars are the extremely rapidly rotating objects left over after massive stars have exhausted their fuel supply. They are extremely dense, with a mass similar to the Sun crammed into a region the size of Sydney. Pulsars emit …
Worlds next door: looking for habitable planets around Alpha Centauri
Could life survive around the nearest stars? In collaboration with the Breakthrough Initiative, Saber Astronautics and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Professor Peter Tuthill is leading TOLIMAN, a project to discover if the nearest stars have planets that could support life. A mission to discover new planets potentially capable of sustaining life around Earth’s nearest neighbour, …