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Scientists at the University of Glasgow's Institute for Gravitational Research (IGR) have successfully concluded extensive testing of a vital component of a future space mission.

Research indicates the existence of Earth-like planets in dead solar system through latest chemical analysis techniques Is there another recipe for life? The chemistry can tell us Jay Farihi By chemically sampling the atmospheres of two dead stars in the Hyades cluster 150 light years away, researchers at Cambridge and NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the building blocks for Earth-sized planets formed around the stars while they lived.

07 May 2013 Less than a year after the decision to site the revolutionary Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Southern Africa and Australia, the SKA Organisation has opened its new international headquarters.

Europe's Herschel Space Observatory has exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant, after almost four years of scientific observations. As none of the instruments can work without helium-cooling, Herschel's operational life is now over. The spacecraft itself will soon be placed in a parking orbit around the Sun, but the analysis and evaluation of the data will continue for years to come.

25 Apr 2013 Astronomers have released a new image of the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse - one of the nearest red supergiants to Earth - revealing the detailed structure of the matter being thrown off the star. The new image, taken by the e-MERLIN radio telescope array operated from the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, also shows regions of surprisingly hot gas in the star's outer atmosphere and a cooler arc of gas weighing almost as much as the Earth.

A team including Dr Mat Page (UCL Space and Climate Physics) has discovered an extremely distant galaxy making stars more than 2000 times faster than our own Milky Way. Seen at a time when the Universe was less than a billion years old, its mere existence challenges our theories of galaxy evolution.

New telescope brings distant galaxies into sharp focus Durham University astronomers have played a key role in research using a powerful new telescope to bring images of the distant Universe into much sharper focus. Durham University astronomers have played a key role in research using a powerful new telescope to bring images of the distant Universe into much sharper focus.

A team led by the University of Warwick has pinpointed a new type of exceptionally powerful and long-lived cosmic explosion, prompting a theory that they arise in the violent death throes of a supergiant star. These explosions create powerful blasts of high energy gamma-rays, known as gamma-ray bursts, but while most bursts are over in about a minute, this new type can last for several hours.

A system that imitates navigation of a space rover, originally intended for use in North West schools, will become part of NASA's International Space Apps Challenge later this month.

Physicists visit neutrino experiment site Physicists from the University of Sussex are in the USA this month helping to set up the largest-ever experiment into neutrinos to be built there, just weeks after its neutrino detector, which is still under construction, recorded its first three-dimensional images of particles.

05 Apr 2013 University of Manchester archaeologists have started the excavation of an enormous building complex in Iraq, thought to be around 4,000 years old. The team, directed by Professor Stuart Campbell and Dr Jane Moon, both from Manchester, and independent archaeologist Robert Killick, first spotted the amazing structure - thought to be an administrative complex serving one of the world's earliest cities- on satellite.

Science journalist Tatiana Moreno talks to Dr Apostolos Voulgarakis about the impact of airborne pollutants on our planet's changing climate. Some airborne pollutants change the make-up of our planet's atmosphere where, according to a wealth of recent research, they can strongly influence regional and global climate.

Born in Kenya, now commuting between the Alps and London, Professor Tejinder Virdee is a particle physicist working at the CMS experiment at CERN.

Latest pictures from Planck satellite have mapped the whole Universe as it was just after the Big Bang Pictures taken by Europe's Planck satellite are giving scientists a view of the Universe that's more than 50 million years older than anything they have previously seen.

Imperial marks pioneering physicist Tom Kibble's 80th birthday with a guest lecture from Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg.

The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre has announced the arrival of its newest exhibit - a beautiful and unique mechanical orrery.

Impressionist Jon Culshaw is helping Oxford University scientists to take viewers on a tour of the ancient solar system and discover strange new worlds.

Once only science fiction, astronomers are now finding hundreds of planetary systems beyond our own. Given recent discoveries through space exploration, it is entirely feasible that we may soon discover the existence of extra-terrestrial life forms on other planets.

Durham is leading two pivotal projects to provide instruments for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), one of the biggest science collaborations in history.

A sophisticated instrument designed and built by scientists and engineers from Imperial College London will fly to Jupiter in 2022, when Europe launches its first mission to the giant planet.

Black holes are deeply mysterious objects that exist throughout the universe: giant plugholes in space that drag in and consume anything that strays too close.

Cardiff University has launched the first ever Welsh-led European Union (EU) space research programme, funded by a €2M award from the EU through its FP7 (Framework Programme 7) SPACE programme.

A lecturer from Durham University has been awarded a grant for his part in a project that seeks to further our understanding of how the sun works.

This is a very special gift for a very extraordinary scientist and an extraordinary man" —Professor Martin Curley At a ceremony at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology where Hawking is Director

Understanding how life evolved in our Solar system by studying the chemistry of meteorites that have smashed into the Moon's surface will be the focus of research, which begins this week. Scientists from the Imperial College London, along with academics from Birkbeck College and University College London, aim to understand in more detail the organic chemistry inside rock fragments on the Moon, which are like a "lunar library" - an unspoilt source of geological information spanning billions of years.

Michael Kramer, whose research uses the telescopes at Jodrell Bank Observatory, received the 2013 Herschel Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society.

Are you watching BBC Stargazing Live - You should be, especially as it features OxSciBlog regular Chris Lintott giving you the chance to (virtually) explore Mars in the citizen science project Planet Four.

The Institute of Astronomy welcomed the aspiring astronomers to join in their winter programme of observing and talks on 28 th November and 19 th December.

The popular astronomy show presented by Brian Cox and comedian Dara O'Briain will run on BBC Two from January 8 to January 10.

Science is no stranger to cinema, being a regular staple of Hollywood blockbusters ever since Star Wars in the 1970s through to Prometheus last year.

A play based on the confessions of a notorious Cold War supergrass - whose personal papers are now housed in an archive at the University of Sussex - is heading for a run in London in 2013.

Attempting to make predictions about science, technology and economics is a famously fraught task. Former IBM Chairman Thomas Watson apparently once remarked: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".

The planetarium is sized to fit a child's hand, with instructions designed to be read aloud." —Seb Falk Object Wh.5892 in the University's Whipple Museum of the History of Science is something of an enigma.

Have you been on virtual safari yet? If you haven't then you should visit Snapshot Serengeti , a new citizen science project asking online volunteers to identify animals in millions of photos taken by camera traps across Serengeti National Park.

Good weather forecasting saved America tens of billions of dollars' worth of damage to homes and belongings during super-storm Sandy, The White House's most senior science advisor told an audience at Imperial College London last week.

Three Imperial physicists will receive a share of a new $3 million prize, awarded for their part in identifying a Higgs-like boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator at CERN.

The University of Warwick is playing a key role in a new space mission which will study planets around stars outside our own solar system.

We are incredibly excited to be working with BBC Learning to put on a fantastic event for all the family in celebration of Stargazing Live 2013.

Advances in our knowledge of planets in the outer reaches of our Solar system are being made thanks to an instrument created by experts at the University of Sheffield which observes high speed phenomena in outer space. The instrument, known as the ULTRACAM, is an ultrafast, triple-beam three-colour camera for high-speed astrophysics.

As leaves fall and winter approaches in Earth's Northern Hemisphere, a change of seasons is also rapidly becoming noticeable in the southern hemisphere of Saturn's giant moon, Titan. Thanks to NASA's Cassini spacecraft which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, scientists have been able to observe for the first time ever the seasonal atmospheric circulation direction change on Titan - an event which only happens once every 15 years and is never observable from Earth.

Material in the debris disc is a fossil from the epoch of planet formation so it may carry information about the processes that contributed to build up the planetary system." —Mark Wyatt Astronomers have detected massive debris discs around 61 Virginis and Gilese 581, two nearby stars that are known to host "super-Earth" planets - so-called because their mass is between that of Earth and Neptune.