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Artist’s impression of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope.

Farewell, Gaia: spacecraft operations come to an end

27 Mar 2025

̽»¨Ö±²¥European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has been powered down, after more than a decade spent gathering data that are now being used to unravel...

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This is a new artist’s impression of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope.

Last starlight for ground-breaking Gaia

15 Jan 2025

̽»¨Ö±²¥European Space Agency’s Milky Way-mapper Gaia has completed the sky-scanning phase of its mission, racking up more than three trillion...

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Galaxy NGC 1549, seen today and 13 billion years ago

‘Inside-out’ galaxy growth observed in the early universe

11 Oct 2024

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the ‘inside-out’ growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700...

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A red dwarf star unleashes a series of powerful flares.

Astronomers uncover risks to planets that could host life

05 Aug 2024

Astronomers have discovered that red dwarf stars can produce stellar flares that carry far-ultraviolet (far-UV) radiation levels much higher than...

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Deep field image from JWST

Earliest detection of metal challenges what we know about the first galaxies

06 Jun 2024

Astronomers have detected carbon in a galaxy just 350 million years after the Big Bang, the earliest detection of any element in the universe other...

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False-colour JWST image of a small fraction of the GOODS South field, with JADES-GS-z7-01-QU highlighted

Astronomers spot oldest ‘dead’ galaxy yet observed

06 Mar 2024

A galaxy that suddenly stopped forming new stars more than 13 billion years ago has been observed by astronomers.

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Gaia view of Omega Centauri

Latest Gaia data release reveals rare lenses, cluster cores and unforeseen science

10 Oct 2023

̽»¨Ö±²¥European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has released a goldmine of knowledge about our galaxy and beyond. Among other findings, the star surveyor...

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ALMA image of the protoplanetary disc around HL Tauri

Astronomers use ‘little hurricanes’ to weigh and date planets around young stars

06 Jan 2023

Little ‘hurricanes’ that form in the discs of gas and dust around young stars can be used to study certain aspects of planet formation, even for...

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Artist's impression of planet formation

Study of ‘polluted’ white dwarfs finds that stars and planets grow together

14 Nov 2022

A team of astronomers have found that planet formation in our young Solar System started much earlier than previously thought, with the building...

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Dust plumes observed being ‘pushed’ into interstellar space by intense starlight

12 Oct 2022

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

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Largest chemical map of the Milky Way unveiled

13 Jun 2022

̽»¨Ö±²¥European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission has released a new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy, including stellar DNA, asymmetric...

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Messier 101 ( ̽»¨Ö±²¥Pinwheel Galaxy)

Supermassive black holes put a brake on stellar births

21 Mar 2022

Black holes with masses equivalent to millions of suns do put a brake on the birth of new stars, say astronomers. Using machine learning and three...

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