Research
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2025.11.19
Decoding Andromeda: Tsinghua and PMO Team Reveal "Premature Fading" of X-ray Binaries
A joint research team led by the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University and the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has conducted the most comprehensive X-ray survey to date of our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda (M31), using the European Space Agency’s (ESA) XMM-Newton space telescope. The study reveals that the total X-ray luminosity of Low-Mass X-ray B...
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2025.11.14
A “Living Fossil” of the Very Early Universe? Discovery of a First-Generation Galaxy at Cosmic Noon
Introduction: An international collaboration led by the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University has discovered a galaxy extremely poor in metals, suspected to contain "first-generation" stars, by using combined observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the Subaru Telescope. The team has named this galaxy "CR3". It is located in the "cosm...
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2025.09.29
Tsinghua University and the National Astronomical Observatories Decode 13-billion-year Evolution of Galactic Metallicity Gradients
By combining the latest observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) with nearly half a century of Hubble Space Telescope data and contributions from multiple ground-based observatories, astronomers at Tsinghua University have mapped the metallicity gradients from the early Universe to the nearby galaxies. During the 13 billion years of cosmic history, the distribution of heavy eleme...
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2025.06.11
The Solar system terrestrial planets started in resonance
Traditionally, models have proposed that Earth and its rocky neighbors formed gradually, through a series of chaotic collisions between Mars-size bodies and planetesimals, after the Solar System’s gas disk had dispersed. Recent observations of young exoplanets suggest a different story: many planets form early, while still embedded in their young gas disks. Due to orbital migration, proto-plan...
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2025.06.05
Studying the harmonies of spinning black holes
A study led by a team of researchers from Tsinghua University and Perimeter Institute, has shed new light on the intricate gravitational waves produced by merging black holes in their final stages. Their research calculates the nonlinear waves produced by black holes in their final stages after a merger. This work establishes a theory that describes wave-wave interactions around generic rotatin...
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