Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images of galaxy clusters, researchers have, for the very first time, been able to examine very compact structures of star clusters inside galaxies, so-called clumps. In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers from Stockholm University have studied the first phase of star formation in distant galaxies.
European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme and are among the most prestigious grants in Europe. The grants will help excellent scientists, who have 7 to 12 years’ experience after their PhDs, to pursue their most promising ideas.
20 years ago, in spring 2002, the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) saw first light. The full aperture of the telescope was opened on May 21. Already on the next day, May 22, the seeing got good. The very first exposure that was saved on disk was on a sunspot group. It demonstrated in a dramatic way that the telescope produced diffraction-limited images. This image was part of the data used for the first scientific publication on the discovery of dark cores in penumbral filaments - which was published in Nature later in 2002. During the two decades that have passed since then, the SST has acquired several advanced instruments. It has thus been able to stay on the frontline of solar research and its publication list is continuously growing. Happy birthday SST!
The planet around the star HD 209458 was the first discovered to transit its star. This enabled precise measurements of the planet’s mass and size. The planet HD 209458 b, or Osiris as it’s nicknamed, is bigger and lighter than Jupiter, and orbits its star tightly taking 3.5 days for a single revolution. Now the space telescope CHEOPS has measured reflected light from the planet by observing how flux from the star-planet system decreases when the planet passes behind the star. HD 209458 b
After many delays, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is finally launched on Christmas Day 2021. The Department of Astronomy, Stockholm University, has the largest participation in projects with JWST from the Swedish side.
