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Tue, 2019-12-31Using VLTI GRAVITY, an international team led by Professor Subo Dong (KIAA) have resolved the two images of a microlensed source star for the first time, more than a century after Einstein first predicted that such image splitting could be caused by the gravity of another (lens) star along the line of sight to the source. This detection fills in the key missing ingredient that yields the mass and distance of the lens star. This technique could be applied in the future to measure the mass of isolated (single) stellar-mass black holes, which have so far remained elusive.
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Thu, 2019-12-12Former PKU postdoc Su Yao (姚苏) was recently awarded a prestigious Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers after the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s selection committee meeting at the end of 2019.
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Fri, 2019-12-06Using a large sample of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), Ming-Yang Zhuang and Luis C. Ho from the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University proposed an updated star formation rate (SFR) calibration using the [O II]λ3727 emission line for star-forming galaxies. Based on photoionization models, they extended the [O II]-based SFR estimator to active galaxies. This work has been published in The Astrophysical Journal (Zhuang & Ho 2019, ApJ, 882, 89).
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Mon, 2019-12-02On 28 and 29 November 2019, KIAA held the 6th KIAA Forum: The Future of Gravitational Wave Astrophysics. More than 80 participants from about 30 institutes inside China and abroad attended this event.
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Wed, 2019-11-06On October 21-25, 2019, an international conference on quasars and supermassive black holes was held at KIAA, Peking University. More than 100 researchers attended the meeting, and nearly half of them are international participants.
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Fri, 2019-10-18A study by the research group led by Prof. Huawei Zhang from Department of Astronomy, Peking University and collaborators from Yunnan University report the discovery of a new Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) in the outskirt of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), using data from the LAMOST spectroscopic surveys, from the Xinglong NAOC 2.16m, Lijiang YNAO 2.4 m optical telescopes and Hale 5m telescope, as well as archival data. The finding has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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Mon, 2019-10-07KIAA invites applications for faculty positions and postdoctoral research positions.
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Mon, 2019-09-16The second KIAA Forum on Gas in Galaxies (KFGG): Multiple-phase ISM—Probing the Activities and Power Engines from Local to Distant Universe was successfully held from 9 to 13 September. The forum accepted more than 100 attendees, more than half of which have a foreign affiliation.
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Sat, 2019-09-07The 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics will be awarded to EHTC, for “the first image of a supermassive black hole, taken by means of an Earth-sized alliance of telescopes”.
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Fri, 2019-09-06Kejia Lee from Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University joined the international collaboration and has used radio observations of the source PSR J1906+0746 to reconstruct the polarised emission over the pulsar’s magnetic pole and to predict the disappearance of the detectable emission by 2028. Observations of this system confirm the validity of a 50-year old model that relates the pulsar’s radiation to its geometry. The researchers are also able to precisely measure the rate of change in spin direction and find an excellent agreement with the predictions of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
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