Latest News

Summer Science Day Held at KIAA

Fri, 2022-07-15KIAA and DoA hosted Summer Science Day on Thursday, July 14 to discuss recent results. The Science Day featured presentations from 19 different postdoctors and PhD students, on topics that included gravitational waves, fast radio bursts, galaxy formation, and planet formation. About 60 PKU astronomers attended the event.

Ruobing Dong Visits KIAA

Mon, 2022-07-11Prof. Dong, an assistant professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, is a global leader in research of planet formation. He combines simulations of the observational signatures of planet formation with real observations from leading observatories, including ALMA, VLT/SPHERE, Gemini/GPI, Subaru/HiCIAO, and VLA.

PKU Astronomy Graduates Receive Prestigious Awards

Fri, 2022-07-01The 2022 Commencement Ceremony of the School of Physics was held in the Centennial Hall of Peking University on June 27. From the Department of Astronomy, 19 students were awarded a bachelor’s degree and 14 students were awarded a PhD. The list of outstanding bachelors and PhD graduates was also announced.

Call for Registration of "CSST Summer School of Galaxy Sciences"

Mon, 2022-06-27The summer school is mainly for graduate students, senior undergraduates, postdocs and young scholars. Some experts will be invited to talk on CSST data, Extragalactic photometry and image processing, spectral analysis and slitless spectroscopy. Hands-on training such as practical data analysis will be arranged.

What Reionized the Universe?

Fri, 2022-06-17A team of astronomers, led by Professor Linhua Jiang at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics and School of Physics at Peking University, has revealed that distant quasars or galactic nuclei with actively growing supermassive black holes made a negligible contribution of ionizing photons to cosmic reionization 13 billion years ago. This finding settles a long-standing issue about the quasar contribution to cosmic reionization, and suggests that galaxies are the major energy sources. The result was recently published as an article in Nature Astronomy on June 16, 2022.

Astronomers reveal first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy

Fri, 2022-05-13Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies. The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes. This effort involved three scientists affiliated with Peking University, including the Director and University Chair Professor Luis C. Ho and Assistant Professor Lijing Shao from the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Assistant Professor He Sun from the College of Future Technology.

Former PKU PhD student Feng Long awarded Sagan Fellowship

Mon, 2022-03-28Former PKU PhD student Feng Long won a prestigious Sagan Fellow, part of the NASA Hubble Fellowship program, to study protoplanetary disks at University of Arizona.

Kohei Inayoshi Awarded "Young Astronomer Prize of 2021"

Sat, 2022-01-29 Prof. Kohei Inayoshi at KIAA is awarded the "Young Astronomer Prize of 2021" from the Astronomical Society of Japan for his research on “theoretical studies for the formation and evolution of massive black holes”.

World-wide radio telescope network strengthens evidence for signal that may hint at ultra-low frequency gravitation...

Wed, 2022-01-12The International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA), a team of astronomers and astrophysics from several collaborations from around the world, has recently announced the results of a comprehensive search for low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) in their most recent official data release, known as Data Release 2 (DR2).

AAS Names 23 New Fellows for 2022

Thu, 2022-01-06The American Astronomical Society (AAS) is honoring 23 members, including Prof. Luis Ho, Director of KIAA at Peking University, for extraordinary achievement and service by naming them AAS Fellows.