Topics September 11, 2020

Kilonova Research Wins 2019 PASJ Excellent Paper Award

A research paper identifying massive explosions known as kilonovae as sources of heavy elements, received the 2019 PASJ Excellent Paper Award.

Topics September 8, 2020

The 6-m Millimeter-Wave Radio Telescope Added to Japan Astronomical Heritage List

The 6-m Millimeter-Wave Radio Telescope, which laid the foundation for Japanese radio astronomy, has been added to the 2019 (second) Japan Astronomical Heritage list.

Science September 4, 2020

Misaligned Planet-Forming Rings around Triple Young Stars

An international team of astronomers using the ALMA found a peculiar dust ring system around the young triple star GW Orionis.

Science August 31, 2020

Can Black Hole Fire Up Cold Heart of the Phoenix?

Radio astronomers have detected jets of hot gas blasted out by a black hole in the galaxy at the heart of the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster, located 5.9 billion light-years away in the constellation Phoenix.

Science August 27, 2020

Rare encounters between cosmic heavyweights

Using Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) imaging data on the Subaru Telescope and other large telescopes, astronomers confirmed three "dual quasars," two of them were previously unknown. Thanks to these new discoveries, it's expected that the understanding of galaxies, their growth, and supermassive black holes will continue.

Science August 13, 2020

That Must’ve Hurt: Ganymede Covered by Giant Crater

Researchers from Kobe University and the National Institute of Technology, Oshima College have investigated the orientation and distribution of the ancient tectonic troughs on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede through a detailed reanalysis of image data from probe missions.

Science August 11, 2020

Classifying Galaxies with Artificial Intelligence

Astronomers have applied AI to ultra-wide field-of-view images of the distant Universe captured by the Subaru Telescope, and have achieved a very high accuracy for finding and classifying spiral galaxies in those images.

Science August 7, 2020

Stellar Egg Hunt with ALMA—Tracing Evolution from Embryo to Baby Star

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) took a census of stellar eggs in the constellation Taurus and revealed their evolution state.

Science August 1, 2020

Machine Learning Finds a Surprising Early Galaxy—Breaking the Lowest Oxygen Abundance Record

New results achieved by combining big data captured by the Subaru Telescope and the power of machine learning have discovered a galaxy with an extremely low oxygen abundance of 1.6% solar abundance, breaking the previous record of the lowest oxygen abundance.

Topics July 20, 2020

Japanese Amateur Astronomers Discovers New Nova in Sagittarius

A Japanese amateur astronomer, Shigehisa Fujikawa discovered a new object in Sagittarius on the night of July 16, 2020 (JST) and communicated it to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.