“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

Continue Reading A dark stream sheds new light on the life of galaxies

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

Continue Reading Alien megastructures? Cosmic thumbprint? What’s behind a James Webb telescope photo that had even astronomers stumped

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.

Continue Reading Milky Way’s graveyard of dead stars found

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

Continue Reading Measuring reliable stellar abundances towards crowded regions using MUSE

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), which houses the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE). Two teams of Australian-based astronomers have recently each been awarded substantial amounts of observing time on this in-demand instrument. Credit: John Colosimo (colosimophotography.com) / ESO. Two teams of astronomers led by The University of Sydney and by

Continue Reading Australian-based astronomers to take a deep dive into the cosmos with time awarded on one of ESO’s most powerful instruments