Bringing artificial intelligence to the search for habitable planets
University partners with Spiral Blue for the TOLIMAN space telescope mission A team led by astronomer Professor Peter Tuthill at the University of Sydney has announced a partnership with Sydney-based space technology company, Spiral Blue, for the TOLIMAN Space Telescope Mission. The TOLIMAN mission aims to detect potentially habitable worlds in our near solar neighbour, the …
From platypus to parsecs and milliCrab: why do astronomers use such weird units?
You may have heard about an asteroid set to fly near Earth that is the size of 18 platypus, or maybe the one that’s the size of 33 armadillos, or even one the size of 22 tuna fish. These outlandish comparisons are the invention of Jerusalem Post journalist Aaron Reich (who bills himself as “creator of the giraffe metric”), but real …
Dark Side of the Universe
Amazing things happen every day. Despite this, the sum total of our sense impressions is only 5% of the totality of reality. Professor Tamara Davis talks to the pioneers in the search for the unknown parts of the universe. We live in a spectacular world. And yet everything we have ever seen, felt, or touched …
FAST RADIO BURSTS — explained in an elevator ride | Elevator Pitch
Why these flashes of energy happen is a mystery. But by studying them, we’ve solved a big question about our universe. Dr Manisha Caleb explains. The universe is vast and full of mystery and one that has been puzzling astronomers for a while now is fast radio bursts. What are fast radio bursts Fast radio bursts, …
Blinded by the light: gamma ray burst brighter than any seen before
Gamma ray bursts are the most explosive events in the Universe. Astronomers last year witnessed the brightest ever seen and have analysed the results, with a Sydney team providing important evidence. Australian astronomers have provided vital information in the global effort to understand the brightest-ever detected gamma ray burst, which swept through our Solar System …
University project wins Anti-Slavery Australia Freedom Award
Integrated Sustainability Analysis (ISA) group and the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA) have won the Innovation Award for the OAASIS project at the 2023 Anti-Slavery Freedom Awards. Slavery is far from an issue of the past, with nearly 50 million people across the world living in conditions of modern slavery on any given day. The …
SSO – NSW Regional Tourist Activation Fund
SSO is set to be improved thanks to a grant from the NSW Regional Tourist Activation Fund of $557,120 which, when combined with an RSAA co-contribution, will revitalise the visitor experience by upgrading and enhancing the visitor centre. This centre, in conjunction with unique behind the scenes tours, will improve the visitor experience and boost …
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 …