Radio astronomy is the discipline in astronomy that uses radio waves instead of light to observe and study the sky. Many objects and phenomena in space emit light, visible or invisible, such as infrared and radio signals. ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder) is a…
By monitoring the cosmos with a radio telescope array, an international team of scientists has detected radio bursts emanating from the constellation Boötes – that could be the first radio emission collected from a planet beyond our solar system. The team, led by Cornell postdoctoral…
Astronomers behind the most extensive search yet for alien life are investigating an intriguing radio wave emission that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. The narrow beam of radio waves was picked up during 30…
Ray Norris, Western Sydney University In September 2019, my colleague Anna Kapinska gave a presentation showing interesting objects she’d found while browsing our new radio astronomical data. She had started noticing very weird shapes she couldn’t fit easily to any known type of object. Among…
There are just four ways astronomers can study the Universe: by looking at physical objects (such as meteorites), elementary particles (such as cosmic rays), gravitational waves, and electromagnetic radiation (such as optical light). Optical light, the radiation we’re able to perceive with our eyes, isn’t…