Discovery of two exoplanets that may be mostly water

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Artistic representation of the planetary system of the star Kepler-138. We see Kepler-138 d in the foreground, and closer to the star, Kepler-138 c. These two planets are probably composed mainly of water. The small planet…

Finalist for the 2022 Prix de la Relève scientifique: Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo

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Associate Professor in the Department of Physics Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo is one of two finalists for the Prix de la Relève scientifique. This is a second nomination for the researcher, following her 2019 nomination. Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo specializes…

Our CRAQ colleagues, members of the CHIME team, receive the Brockhouse Canada 2022 Award

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CHIME is a large, fixed radio telescope with a large collection area, wide bandwidth, and a huge instantaneous field of view (about 200 square degrees, equivalent to the area covered by more than 1000 times the…

Star Duo Forms a ‘Fingerprint’ in Space, NASA Webb Finds

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Astronomers share a new image shows at least 17 dust rings created by a rare type of star and its companion, locked in a celestial dance. The team of astronomers includes  Anthony Moffat, Université de Montréal…

An extrasolar world covered in water?

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With the help of instruments designed partly in Canada, a team of astronomers from the CRAQ have discovered an exoplanet that could be completely covered in water, a target they hope to observe with the Webb…

‘Black hole police’ discover a dormant black hole outside our galaxy

This artist’s impression shows what the binary system VFTS 243 might look like if we were observing it up close. The system, which is located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, is composed of a hot, blue star with 25 times the Sun’s mass and a black hole, which is at least nine times the mass of the Sun. The sizes of the two binary components are not to scale: in reality, the blue star is about 200 000 times larger than the black hole.  Note that the 'lensing' effect around the black hole is shown for illustration purposes only, to make this dark object more noticeable in the image. The inclination of the system means that, when looking at it from Earth, we cannot observe the black hole eclipsing the star.

  A team of international experts, including Université de Montréal Emeritus Professor Anthony Moffat and member of the Center for Research in Astrophysics of Quebec (CRAQ), have found a stellar-mass black hole in the Large Magellanic…

A new planet hunter awakens: NIRPS instrument sees first light

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The Near InfraRed Planet Searcher (NIRPS) instrument, developed in part at the Université de Montréal and the Université Laval, has successfully performed its first observations. Mounted on ESO’s 3.6-m telescope at the La Silla Observatory in…

Reunions and Discoveries at the 2022 CRAQ Annual Meeting!

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After two years of absence, the annual meetings of the Center for Research in Astrophysics of Quebec are back in person! Bishop’s University received the CRAQ astronomers on May 11, 12 and 13 at the Estrimont…

Astronomers reveal first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy

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Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable…

A fully isolated dwarf galaxy unexpectedly affected by ram pressure

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Dwarf galaxies are known to be pristine probes of the early Universe, especially when they are isolated and not interacting with massive galaxies. Observations with the MeerKAT radio telescope of WLM, an archetype of such a…