Congratulations to Peter for his Michelson Prize

Congrats to Peter who was awarded the Michelson Prize for his theoretical work, instrumentation, science and student training in the field of interferometry. “Tuthill has contributed to theoretical work, instrumentation,…
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Congratulations to Peter for his Michelson Prize

Manisha’s discovery of an unusual radio transient in the media

Manisha got some good media coverage for her discovery of an unusual radio transient; her Conversation article was the most-read Australian/NZ article of the week when it was published. See…
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Manisha’s discovery of an unusual radio transient in the media

Book an Astronomer – Connecting to the Universe for Science Week 2024

This year during Science Week the astronomers of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy have specifically set aside the time to bring our exciting science into the community. If your organisation…
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Book an Astronomer – Connecting to the Universe for Science Week 2024

SIfA  PhD students attended the Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting

Congratulations to SIfA  PhD students – Simon Weng & Emily Kerrison – chosen as part of the group of ten ECRs to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting: Ms Emily Kerrison of…
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SIfA  PhD students attended the Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting

We’ve detected a star barely hotter than a pizza oven – the coldest ever found to emit radio waves

Congrats to Kovi Rose whose recent paper got some good media coverage We have identified the coldest star ever found to produce radio waves – a brown dwarf too small to…
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We’ve detected a star barely hotter than a pizza oven – the coldest ever found to emit radio waves

A long-period radio transient active for three decades

Congratulations to Manisha who was part of a recent paper published in Nature this month:  This object belongs to a new class of radio transients of which only 3 are now…
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A long-period radio transient active for three decades

News

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

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

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

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

This newly discovered neutron star might light the way for a whole new class of stellar object

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. This image,

Event Horizon Telescope set to reveal ‘exciting results’ about the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way

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

We’ve used a new technique to discover the brightest radio pulsar outside our own galaxy

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 simulated view of the Alpha Centauri binary through the

Worlds next door: looking for habitable planets around Alpha Centauri

The timescales in which star-forming galaxies deplete their gas is found to be short relative to the age of the Universe. This points to the conclusion that galaxies must have a way to replenish their gas reservoirs and indeed, early cosmological simulations reveal cold gas being channeled along dark matter

A FLASH combination: ASKAP and MUSE sniff out gas around galaxies

In early 2020, we detected an unusual radio signal coming from somewhere near the centre of our galaxy. The signal blinked on and off, growing 100 times brighter and dimmer over time. What’s more, the radio waves in the signal had an uncommon “circular polarisation”, which means the electric field in the

We found a mysterious flashing radio signal from near the centre of the galaxy

Researchers have created a model of the evolution of the Milky Way which explains how key chemical distributions in the galaxy’s stars came to be. One of the biggest questions in astronomy is related to how our home galaxy, the Milky Way, came to be in its current state. Whilst

Galactic Archaeology and Modeling the Milky Way

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