Planetary scientist Katarina Miljkovic is discussing how she uses “space rocks” to understand how planets form. She’s available for interview and is giving free public talks this week in North Sydney, Wollongong, and Canberra.
The planets in our solar system are vastly different although they all formed from the same cloud of gas and dust around a star – our sun. Why is this?
Associate Professor Katarina Miljkovic works at Curtin University’s Space Science and Technology Centre and School of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
She thinks the answers lie in studying how asteroids, comets and meteors bombarded the planets in the past, changing the surface conditions.
Research reveals how star-making pollutes the cosmos
Animation available, astronomers available in Australia and UK for interview
Galaxies pollute the environment they exist in, researchers have found.
A team of astronomers led by Alex Cameron and Deanne Fisher from the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) used a new imaging system on at the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii to confirm that what flows into a galaxy is a lot cleaner than what flows out.
Galaxies with extended disks maintain productivity, research reveals
Massive galaxies with extra-large extended “puffy” disks produced stars for longer than their more compact cousins, new modelling reveals.
In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers led by Dr Anshu Gupta and Associate Professor Kim-Vy Tran from Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), show that the sheer size of a galaxy influences when it stops making new stars.
Completion of Australian-led astronomy project sheds light on the evolution of the Universe
The complex mechanics determining how galaxies spin, grow, cluster and die have been revealed following the release of all the data gathered during a massive seven-year Australian-led astronomy research project.
The scientists observed 13 galaxies at a time, building to a total of 3068, using a custom-built instrument called the Sydney-AAO Multi-Object Integral-Field Spectrograph (SAMI), connected to the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales. The telescope is operated by the Australian National University.
Australian telescopes and European satellite combine to reveal unexpected motions among the Galaxy’s rarest objects
Theories on how the Milky Way formed are set to be rewritten following discoveries about the behaviour of some of its oldest stars.
An investigation into the orbits of the Galaxy’s metal-poor stars – assumed to be among the most ancient in existence – has found that some of them travel in previously unpredicted patterns.
Australian-led GALAH project releases chemical information for 600,000 stars.
How do stars destroy lithium? Was a drastic change in the shape of the Milky Way caused by the sudden arrival of millions of stellar stowaways?
Day and night at the Anglo Australian Telescope. Half right image taken in the late afternoon, the Moon is up. Half left image taken just some few minutes before the beginning of the morning twilight of the same night. Orion and the Pleiades shine over the AAT on a very dark night. 4-5 November 2011. Siding Spring Observatory, NSW, Australia. Credit: Dr Ángel R. López-Sánchez/Australian Astronomical Optics/Macquarie University/ASTRO 3D
These are just a couple of the astronomical questions likely to be answered following the release today of ‘GALAH DR3’, the largest set of stellar chemical data ever compiled.
The data, comprising more than 500 GB of information gleaned from more than 30 million individual measurements, was gathered by astronomers including Sven Buder, Sarah Martell and Sanjib Sharma from Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) using the Anglo Australian Telescope (AAT) at the Australian Astronomical Observatory at Siding Spring in rural New South Wales.
Australian researchers find ways to overcome the blinding glare of quasars
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will uncover galaxies never before seen by humanity, Australian-led research reveals.
The telescope, due to launch in late 2021, is the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built.
Two new studies led by Madeline Marshall from Australia’s University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) find that the Webb will be able to reveal galaxies currently masked by powerful lights called quasars.
Modelling shows big galaxies get bigger by merging with smaller ones
Distribution of dark matter density overlayed with the gas density. This image cleanly shows the gas channels connecting the central galaxy with its neighbours. Credit: Gupta et al/ASTRO 3D/ IllustrisTNG collaboration.
Galaxies
grow large by eating their smaller neighbours, new research reveals.
Exactly
how massive galaxies attain their size is poorly understood, not least because
they swell over billions of years. But now a combination of observation and
modelling from researchers led by Dr Anshu Gupta from Australia’s ARC Centre of
Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) has provided a
vital clue.
Sky survey provides clues to how they change over time.
A simulation showing a section of the Universe at its broadest scale. A web of cosmic filaments forms a lattice of matter, enclosing vast voids. Credit: Tiamat simulation, Greg Poole
The direction in which a galaxy spins depends on its mass, researchers have found.
A team of astrophysicists analysed 1418 galaxies and found that small ones are likely to spin on a different axis to large ones. The rotation was measured in relation to each galaxy’s closest “cosmic filament” – the largest structures in the universe.
Filaments are massive thread-like formations, comprising huge amounts of matter – including galaxies, gas and, modelling implies, dark matter. They can be 500 million light years long but just 20 million light years wide. At their largest scale, the filaments divide the universe into a vast gravitationally linked lattice interspersed with enormous dark matter voids.
