 Recently, the international scientific journal Nature Astronomy published online the paper "A slightly oblate dark matter halo revealed by a retrograde precessing Galactic disk warp", which is jointly led by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Peking University, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The international team pioneered the "motion picture" method for measuring the precession rate of the Milky Way's disk warp. Using a sample of Cepheid variable stars of different ages, this method allows the precession direction and rate of the Milky Way's warp to be clearly observed. Based on these measurements, the research team revealed that the current dark matter halo of the Milky Way is slightly oblate.
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 KIAA announces an advancement in cosmic exploration with the release of the CatNorth quasar candidate catalog, as recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. The international collaborative study, led by Dr. Yuming Fu and Prof. Xue-Bing Wu, presents an enhanced set of over 1.5 million reliable quasar candidates, building upon the initial Gaia DR3 quasar candidate catalog noted for its substantial size but low purity.
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 An international research team led by Gregory Desvignes from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, used the Effelsberg and Jodrell Bank radio telescopes to observe the precessing magnetar XTE J1810-197 — a highly magnetised and ultra-dense neutron star — shortly after its X-ray enhanced activity and radio reactivation. The study was co-authored by Dr. Yong Gao and Professor Lijing Shao from the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University. This precession damped on a timescale of a few months challenging some models used to explain the origin of the mysterious repeating fast radio bursts.
The results are published in this week’s issue of Nature Astronomy.
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 Combining ALMA observations and single-dish observations including Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX) in Chile and James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii, Fengwei Xu, a fourth-year Ph.D. student under the supervision of Prof. Ke Wang at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, proposed a comprehensive evolutionary picture of how massive protoclusters are assembled. The series of works have been accepted for publication by Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society and The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
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 An international team of astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaiʻi Telescope (CFHT), Gemini North telescope (Gemini North), Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and Case Western Reserve University's Burrell Schmidt Telescope, have captured the eroding remains of more than 100 galaxies in an elusive state of transformation. These findings confirm that some of the densest galaxies in the Universe, dubbed “ultra-compact dwarfs” (UCDs) are likely the fossil remains of normal dwarf galaxies that have been stripped of their outer layers. The results were reported in a recent article, entitled, “An evolutionary continuum from nucleated dwarf galaxies to star clusters,” and was published on 9 November 2023 in the journal Nature. This research was led by Kaxiang Wang, a Ph.D. student at Peking University, and Eric Peng, a former professor at PKU.
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 With excellent sensitivity and spatial and spectral resolutions, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) presents an unprecedented opportunity to promote our understanding of the evolutionary processes of galaxies. Taking advantage of a recently available set of JWST observations taken with Medium Resolution Spectrograph (MRS) on the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), Dr. Lulu Zhang, who got his PhD degree this July from Peking University under the supervision of Prof. Luis C. Ho at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, ascertained whether and the manner in which AGN feedback influences the circumnuclear star formation of the well-studied nearby luminous infrared galaxy, NGC 7469, which also hosts a powerful type 1 active galactic nucleus (AGN). Their findings appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2023, 953, L9).
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