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Dr Deaglan Bartlett

Dr Bartlett recognised by RAS

Dr Deaglan Bartlett has been awarded the Early Career Award (A) by the Royal Astronomical Society recognising early achievement in astronomy.

Professor Suzanne Aigrain

Professor Aigrain awarded RAS lectureship

Professor Suzanne Aigrain has been awarded the George Darwin Lectureship by the Royal Astronomical Society.

The new SOXS astronomical instrument perched on a hilltop.

‘First light’ achieved from new SOXS spectrograph

Researchers at the University of Oxford have joined forces with an international consortium in the delivery of a powerful new astronomical instrument, SOXS (Son of X-Shooter), which has now achieved “first light” at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

A figure illustrating the rotation of neutral hydrogen (right) in galaxies residing in an extended filament (middle), where the galaxies exhibit a coherent bulk rotational motion tracing the large-scale cosmic web (left).

Astronomers spot one of the largest spinning structures ever found in the Universe

An international team led by the University of Oxford has identified one of the largest rotating structures ever reported: a ‘razor-thin’ string of galaxies embedded in a giant spinning cosmic filament 140 million light years away.

4 December 2025

Top to bottom, left to right: Marica Branchesi (GSSI), Andrew Levan (Radboud), Elena Pian (INAF), Stephen Smartt (Oxford), Nial Tnavir (Leicester), Darach Watson (NBI)

Into Change Award for groundbreaking collaboration

An international collaboration, including Professor Stephen Smartt FRS MRIA, has been recognised with an Into Change Award by the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science.

3 December 2025

The same transient event shown in three surveys, with rows corresponding to Pan-STARRS (top), MeerLICHT (middle), and ATLAS (bottom).

AI breakthrough helps astronomers spot cosmic events with just a handful of examples

A new study co-led by the University of Oxford and Google Cloud has shown how general-purpose AI can accurately classify real changes in the night sky.

The MeerKAT radio telescope

First evidence of black hole and astrophysical jets alignment

Scientists have found direct evidence that the fastest and most powerful astrophysical jets are locked to the spin of the black hole that launches them. The results have been published in Nature Astronomy.

23 September 2025

Image of MeerKAT radio telescope during daytime.

Distant galaxies reveal hidden effect from Big Bang

Physicists at the University of Oxford have found the first compelling observational evidence that the Cosmic Microwave Background – the faint afterglow of the Big Bang – affects radio signals from distant galaxies.

15 September 2025

Professor Stephen Smartt and Dr Heloise Stevance

AI tool helps astronomers find supernovae in a sky full of noise

A new AI-powered tool has reduced astronomers’ workload by 85% filtering through thousands of data alerts to identify the few genuine signals caused by supernovae – powerful explosions from dying stars.

11 September 2025

Insight into rare pulsar

New insights into rare pulsar

Physicists from the University of Oxford have been part of an international team who have uncovered new insights into the behaviour of a rare transitional millisecond pulsar.

An estimation of the orbit of 3I (red, dashed) relative to the orbit of the Sun (yellow, dotted) through the Milky Way.

Third ever detection of interstellar object

The discovery of 3I/ATLAS – an interstellar comet shooting through the Solar System – sent astronomers scrambling last week, excited for only their third chance to study a small body from another star.

Dr Sophia Vaughan

Dr Vaughan awarded RAS thesis prize

Dr Sophia Vaughan has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's Michael Penston Thesis Prize following her DPhil at the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics.