An international team of astronomers has captured the most detailed and completed view yet of the mysterious filaments surrounding the giant galaxy M87. Using new observations from the Gran Telescopio Canarias and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the study reveals how these long, thread-like structures move, evolve, and interact with their galactic environment and the activity of the central supermassive black hole. These findings have just been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. M87: a giant galaxy and its mysterious threads M87, located about 55 million

Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, among the tiniest and faintest galaxies known, may hold the key to understanding one of the Universe’s biggest mysteries: the true nature of dark matter. A new study reveals that even a single collision between dark matter particles every 10 billion years — roughly the age of the Universe — is enough to explain the dark matter cores observed in these small systems. These galaxies, which contain only a few thousand stars, are dominated by dark matter and have relatively simple evolutionary histories. That makes them ideal cosmic laboratories for testing theories

From March 9–12, 2026, the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies – HITS hosted the Second Annual Meeting of the EDUCADO Doctoral Network (MSCA DN), a network coordinated and led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. This pivotal gathering marks a significant milestone in the project’s timeline, bringing together international research groups from across the consortium. The meeting featured the 11 Doctoral Candidates as the central focus, providing them with a platform to present their research progress in applying AI to galaxy evolution and astronomical big data. A highlight of