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  • Unusual carbon dioxide-rich disk detected around young star challenges planet formation models

    A study led by Jenny Frediani at Stockholm University has revealed a planet-forming disk with a strikingly unusual chemical composition: an unexpectedly high abundance of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in regions where Earth-like planets may one day form. The discovery, made using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), challenges long-standing assumptions about the chemistry of planetary birthplaces. The study is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

  • Red galaxies provide new insights into the birth of the universe

    Images taken with the MIRI infrared camera on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have made it possible to observe the first galaxies in long-wavelength infrared light for the first time. Alongside a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, these images provide new insights into how the first galaxies formed over 13 billion years ago.

  • JWST Illuminates the Universe’s First Billion Year

    A new Perspective published in Nature Astronomy provides the most comprehensive snapshot yet of the Universe’s first Billion years, as revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Drawn from the collective insights of an international assemblage of leading astronomers, the work charts a transformative moment in cosmic research—an era where science textbooks are being rewritten in real time.

    Department of Astronomy

  • New kind of supernova explosion reveals a naked star

    In the latest issue of the journal Nature, astronomers from Stockholm University participate in a study of an exploding star that lacks all of the most common elements in the Universe. This rare stripped star helps scientists understand how and where elements like sulphur and silicon form.

  • Astronomers witness a fast and bright outburst as a small black hole destroys star

    Astronomers have used the telescopes at the Canary Islands Observatories on La Palma, including the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), to study the evolution of an exceptionally fast and bright cosmic outburst in a small galaxy located 500 million light years away. The outburst, identified as CSS161010, reached its brightest peak in just 4 days and declined to half of this brightness in only 2.5 days, making its discovery and subsequent observations of its evolution particularly challenging

    Department of Astronomy

  • Swedish scientists engaged in finding record numbers of exploding stars

    A small telescope on a mountain in California has enabled collecting over 10 000 supernovae over the past 7 years. A large team of international scientists – including astronomers in Stockholm– has made this possible. The international supernova survey Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and its Bright Transient Survey (BTS) has finally reached 10 000 supernovae. A supernova is an exploding star, and the best way to find one is to monitor many, many distant galaxies and look for new bright objects. This is done routinely with the ZTF telescope on Palomar, California, in the BTS study led by Caltech staff-scientist Christoffer Fremling. This project has now reached a record-breaking number of 10 000 supernovae.   The most prolific supernova hunter in the team is Fremling's former PhD supervisor, Professor Jesper Sollerman at the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University.

    Department of Astronomy

  • Six researchers share SEK 175 million from the Wallenberg Foundation

    The importance of Arctic methane emissions for the climate, how matter is formed and broken down, evolutionary shifts in the plant kingdom, and new effective methods for producing bioactive substances that will meet future needs for medicines and advanced electronics. These are just a few examples of basic research at Stockholm University that has received funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

  • NASA’s Hubble finds more black holes than expected in the early universe

    With the help of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by scientists in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University has found more black holes in the early universe than has previously been reported. The new result can help scientists understand how supermassive black holes were created.

  • Star clusters observed within a galaxy in the early Universe for the first time

    Understanding how stars and galaxies formed and evolved is one of astrophysics' biggest challenges. A new study led by Dr. Angela Adamo at Stockholm University offers fresh insights. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers studied the galaxy Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD), whose light was emitted 460 million years after the big bang. This galaxy, magnified by gravitational lensing, revealed five young massive star clusters. “The surprise and astonishment was incredible when we opened the JWST images for the first time” says Adamo. The Epoch of Reionization (EoR), within the first billion years after the big bang, saw the universe's transition from neutral hydrogen gas to ionized matter. Early galaxies are believed to have driven this change. Studying these galaxies requires observing distant objects, allowing us to "look back in time." Gravitational lensing, where a massive celestial body bends light like a magnifying glass, helps observe distant galaxies in detail.

    Department of Astronomy

  • The most distant quasar observed using the JWST

    Using the space telescope JWST, astronomers have examined one of the most distant known black holes in the universe. Their observations provide a glimpse of the growth of black holes in the early universe, less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Surprisingly, the early black hole in question seems to be “feeding” in much the same manner as its more recent kin. Astronomers have been struggling for a while now to explain how the earliest black holes gained their considerable masses. The new results all but rule out unusually efficient feeding mechanisms at early times as a possible solution. The results have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The first billion years of cosmic history pose a challenge: The earliest known black holes in the centers of galaxies have surprisingly large masses. How did they get so massive, so quickly? The new observations described here provide strong evidence against some proposed explanations, notably against an “ultra-effective feeding mode” for the earliest black holes.

    Department of Astronomy

  • ANDES gets go-ahead to be installed at the Extremely Large Telescope

    An agreement on the installation of ANDES, the ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph, at ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has been signed. Sweden is directly involved in ANDES through SELTIC (Swedish ELT Instrument Consortium) which consist of scientists and engineers from Stockholm University, Uppsala University, and Lund University. The European Southern Observatories (ESO) is an international organisation of 16 countries (among them Sweden) that runs several world-class observatories, all located in Chile. ESO’s next endeavour is to build the world’s largest telescope, the ELT with an aperture of astonishing 39 meters, at Cerro Armazones, in the Atacama desert, Chile. Construction of ELT is well underway and it is expected to be ready for its first science observations in 2028.  

    Department of Astronomy

  • Astronomy art at Liljevalchs

    Göran Östlin, Professor at the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University, is collaborating with artist Cecilia Ömalm in the exhibition “The Stockholm Cosmology” at the Liljevalchs Art Exhibition Centre this summer. “The Stockholm Cosmology” will be held at the Liljevalchs Art Exhibition Centre in Stockholm from the 14th of June to the 18th of August. Göran Östlin, Professor at the Department of Astronomy, and artist Cecilia Ömalm have collaborated to combine art and science as part of the exhibition. They have worked together using the cyanotype photographic method, a camera-less photography technique invented by astronomer John Herschel in 1842. The final products aim to visualize the Universe as Herschel might have seen it.

    Department of Astronomy

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