A new citizen science project launched today by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium, in collaboration with the Zooniverse platform, will enable volunteers from around the world to identify the shapes of millions of galaxies in images taken by ESA's Euclid space telescope. The aim of the initiative is to train deep AI neural networks to build the largest morphology catalogue to date. In November 2023 and May 2024, the world got its first glimpse at the quality of Euclid’s images, targeting a variety of sources, from nearby nebulas to distant clusters of galaxies. And

A pioneering study from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) which combines laboratory chemistry with astrophysics, has shown for the first time that grains of dust formed by carbon and hydrogen in a highly disordered state, known as HAC, can take part in the formation of fullerenes, carbon molecules which are of key importance for the development of life in the universe, and with potential applications in nanotechnology. The results are published as a Letter to the Editor in the prestigious journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Fullerenes are carbon molecules which are very big

On January 7, 2025, the European Commission established the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), furthering its mission to become the world’s largest and most powerful observatory for gamma-ray astronomy. The creation of the CTAO ERIC will enable the Observatory's construction to advance rapidly and provide a framework for distributing its data worldwide, significantly accelerating its progress toward scientific discovery. “The ERIC will streamline the construction and operation of the Observatory in a way that will undoubtedly