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Mon, 2025-04-21A group of astronomers has found over 1,300 new quasars behind the Galactic plane by using China's Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), and the scientists said the results shed new light on some hot issues of cosmic research.
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Tue, 2025-04-01Recently, the Max Planck Society (MPG) approved the establishment of a new Max Planck Partner Group led by Dr. Jinyi Shangguan, an Assistant Professor at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University. The group will focus on “Probing Supermassive Black Hole Evolution with Near-infrared Interferometry” and collaborate closely with the infrared research team led by Prof. Reinhard Genzel and Prof. Frank Eisenhauer, Directors of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching.
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Tue, 2025-04-01Recently, Lile Wang and Suwei Wang from KIAA were interviewed by Professor Frank Timmes, deputy editor of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) journals.
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Fri, 2025-03-28A research team led by Professor Liu Fukun from the Department of Astronomy at the School of Physics of Peking University and the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics recently discovered that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sgr A*, merged with an intermediate black hole about 10 million years ago. When stars get too close to a supermassive black hole, they can be thrown out at high speeds and become a hypervelocity star. By analyzing the velocity distribution of these hypervelocity stars in the Milky Way halo, the team found that between 50 and 250 million years ago, an intermediate-mass black hole of approximately 15,000 times the mass of the Sun existed near the supermassive black hole Sgr A* at the Galactic center.
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Mon, 2025-03-03
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Wed, 2025-01-08On November 8, 2024, astronomers at Caltech's Palomar Observatory directed a brand-new spectrograph instrument, the Next Generation Palomar Spectrograph (NGPS), to capture data from a newfound supernova. The resulting spectrum from the erupting star was a delight for the many team members in the USA and China, including at Peking University, who have been working on the instrument since 2017. The new first-light spectrum demonstrates new instrument's ability to capture more detail, and fainter targets, than its predecessor, the Double Spectrograph, which was installed on the historic Hale Telescope more than 40 years ago.
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Fri, 2024-12-27This award recognizes PKU postdoctoral scholars whose research has significant scientific and academic value or demonstrates outstanding economic or social benefits.
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Tue, 2024-12-17Prof. Wu Yuefang, an emeritus faculty of PKU astronomy, passed away peacefully on December 13 after a long illness. During her career, Prof. Wu made significant contributions to our understanding of star formation through her own research and through her students. In addition to her research, Prof. Wu was known as a dedicated advisor, mentor, and teacher for many students.
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Sun, 2024-12-08The spinning of Sagittarius A* is vital to characterize the supermassive black hole and it is crucial in testing the “cosmic censorship conjecture” and “no hair theorem” of black hole spacetime in Einstein's general relativity. Previous studies have shown that the spin of Sagittarius A* could be measured within 1 percent relative uncertainty by timing radio signals from pulsars. However, these measurements depend on the discovery of a pulsar in a very compact orbit of less than half a year, a challenging prospect from observation. In order to alleviate the problem, a recent study, carried out by Zexin Hu and Prof. Lijing Shao from KIAA, provides a novel method of combining the observation of two pulsars with larger orbital periods in the Galactic Center to precisely measure the spin of Sagittarius A*. The work has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
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Fri, 2024-12-06The Forum brought together more than 40 postdoctoral researchers from different institutions in China, providing them with the opportunity to present their work and engage in discussions and plan future collaboration.
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