A citizen science project, which invites members of the public to take part in identifying cosmic explosions, has already identified 20 new astronomical discoveries. Over 2,000 volunteers across 105 different countries have worked on 600,000 classifications over a six-month period.
Astronomers uncovered that a well-known X-ray binary, whose exact nature has been a mystery to scientists until now, is actually a hidden ultraluminous X-ray source.
Several international research groups have already confirmed the theory that there are two black holes at the centre of the distant galaxy OJ 287, first suggested by astronomers at the University of Turku, Finland. A new study shows that satellite observations conducted in 2021 revealed the smaller black hole of the pair for the first time.
Quasars are extremely luminous galaxies and their light is produced by a supermassive black hole at their center, which is actively feeding on the cosmic gas and dust around it. Previous theories have suggested that quasars and their supermassive black holes are formed when galaxies collide, but a recent doctoral thesis at the University of Turku shows that quasars can form even in the absence of galaxy interactions.
A meeting of the International Scientific Committee (CCI) of the Canary Islands Observatories was held at the University of Turku on 29 May 2024. The meeting was attended by CCI representatives from member countries all over Europe and the members of management of the Canary Islands Observatories.
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHT) has released new images of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87. Researchers from Aalto University and the University of Turku contributed to forming the images from the new observations.
Docent Sergey Tsygankov, of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has received the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
An international team of astronomers observed the second one of the two supermassive black holes circling each other in an active galaxy OJ 287.
An international research team has discovered the first example of a supernova, known as SN 2018ivc, showing an unprecedented rebrightening at millimeter wavelengths about one year after the explosion.
When neutron stars collide, they produce a violent explosion. Data from the only well observed collision show that the explosion was perfectly spherical, completely contrary to expectations. How this is possible remains a mystery, but the discovery may provide a new key to fundamental physics and to measuring the age of the Universe. The discovery was made by an international collaboration led by astrophysicists from the University of Copenhagen and including researchers from the University of Turku. The research has just been published in the journal Nature.