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The two earliest and most distant galaxies yet confirmed, dating back to only 300 million years after the Big Bang, have been discovered using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers today announced.

Two international teams of astronomers, including one co-led by a PhD candidate based at UCL and the University of Edinburgh, have discovered a planet only 40 light years away whose size is between that of Earth and Venus. The researchers used observations by NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).

An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, has used the James Webb Space Telescope to find evidence for an ongoing merger of two galaxies and their massive black holes when the Universe was only 740 million years old. This marks the most distant detection of a black hole merger ever obtained and the first time that this phenomenon has been detected so early in the Universe.

A new, Earth-sized planet orbiting an ultra-cool red dwarf star, has been detected by an international team of astronomers - just 55 light years away. The planet is only the second of its kind to be discovered around this type of star. Called SPECULOOS-3 b, it takes around 17 hours to complete an orbit of the star which is more than twice as cold as our sun, as well as ten times less massive and a hundred times less luminous.

The European Space Agency's Gaia mission involving UCL researchers has discovered the most massive black hole in our galaxy to date that formed from an exploding star. The black hole, known as Gaia BH3, is 33 times the mass of our Sun and located relatively close to Earth at 2,000 light years away. (The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across.

Intensive new nano-analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite has revealed how it was affected by water and repeatedly smashed apart and reassembled on the journey it took through space before landing in an English sheep field in 2021. Researchers from dozens of institutions in the UK, Europe, Australia, and the USA collaborated on the research.

Our solar system might be pulled into the gravity of a white dwarf star, crushed and ground to dust, according to scientists from the University of Warwick. Astrophysicists from Warwick and other universities have helped to answer what happens to planetary systems, like our solar system, when their host stars become white dwarfs.

The two studies uses data from the Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany (left), the Lovell telescope in the UK (middle), and Murriyang, the Parkes radio telescope in Australia (right). Norbert Junkes / Mike Peel / Marcus Lower An international team of astronomers have made a significant breakthrough in understanding the unprecedented behaviour of a previously dormant star with a powerful magnetic field.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow are part of the international collaboration behind the detection of a gravitational wave signal which casts new light on the diversity of cosmic objects. In a paper presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society on Friday 5 April, researchers from LIGO-VIRGO-Kagra collaboration revealed a remarkable new gravitational wave signal detected in May last year.

For the first time, signs of the rainbow-like 'glory effect' have been detected on a planet outside our solar system. Glory are colourful concentric rings of light that occur only under peculiar conditions. Glory occurs when light is reflected off clouds made up of a perfectly uniform, but so far unknown, substance.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration, led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US and involving UCL researchers, has made the most precise measurements to date of how fast the universe has expanded throughout its history. The analysis, based on the largest 3D map of the cosmos ever created with just the first year of data from DESI, confirms the basics of our current best model of the universe - with some tantalising areas to explore with more data.

Astronomers including those at the University of Warwick, have observed jets of matter being expelled into space at more than one-third the speed of light. These jets play an important role in the universe, from forming stars to transporting elements deep into space. Jets are produced by many different astronomical objects but studying them is hard, as they are so energetic.

Imperial College London and NASA researchers have found signs that water was plentiful in Mars' Gale crater for longer than previously thought. Billions of years ago, Mars was home to abundant water, and its Gale crater contained a lake. Gradually, the climate changed, drying the Red Planet and creating the dusty desert world we know today.

Astronauts have been able to track their muscle health in spaceflight for the first time using a handheld device, revealing which muscles are most at risk of weakening in low gravity conditions. An international research team, including the University of Southampton and led by Charité University in Berlin, monitored the muscle health of twelve astronauts before, during and after a stay on the International Space Station (ISS).

A team of astronomers including UCL's Professor Paola Pinilla have conducted one of the largest ever surveys of planet-forming discs, shedding new light on the fascinating and complex process of planet formation. The research, published in three new papers in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics , brings together observations of more than 80 young stars that might have planets forming around them, providing astronomers with a wealth of data and unique insights into how planets arise in different regions of our galaxy.

A UCL-led research team has used artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to infer the influence and properties of dark energy more precisely from a map of dark and visible matter in the Universe covering the last seven billion years. The study, carried out by the Dark Energy Survey collaboration, doubled the precision at which key characteristics of the Universe, including the overall density of dark energy, could be inferred from the map.

Scientists have revealed why some white dwarfs mysteriously stop cooling - changing ideas on just how old stars really are, and what happens to them when they die. White dwarf stars are universally believed to be 'dead stars' that continuously cool down over time. However, in 2019, data from the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Gaia satellite discovered a population of white dwarf stars that have stopped cooling for more than eight billion years.

A galaxy that suddenly stopped forming new stars more than 13 billion years ago has been observed by astronomers. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge have spotted a 'dead' galaxy when the universe was just 700 million years old, the oldest such galaxy ever observed.

The winds that help to form planets in the gaseous discs of early solar systems have been imaged for the first time by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) using the noble gases neon and argon. Planetary systems like our Solar System seem to contain more rocky objects than gas-rich ones. Around our sun, these include the inner planets, the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt.

It takes more than a galaxy merger to make a black hole grow and new stars form: machine learning shows cold gas is needed too to initiate rapid growth. Published on Tuesday 5 March 2024 Last updated on Tuesday 5 March 2024 When they are active, supermassive black holes play a crucial role in the way galaxies evolve.