Latest news from DAWN
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers led by a Danish bachelor student has uncovered surprising new details about the fine structure of cosmic dust in nearby galaxies. This dust — tiny particles floating in space — plays a key role in how stars and planets are born, and how galaxies evolve. The new study shows that different kinds of dust clouds behave in very different ways, and even helps pinpoint the size of the smallest patterns that dust clouds naturally form inside galaxies.
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During the last six months, academic employee Gaurav Kumar, together with master students Kaj Grimstrup, Liazhe Li, and Omar Rashdan, have built two radio telescopes. One of them now observed its first light, while the other will follow soon. The two telescope will be mounted on the roof of the Niels Bohr Building, to be used for student projects in the future.
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Congratulations to Kasper Elm Heintz, assistant professor at the Cosmic Dawn Center, who has been selected as one of the top 100 talents in Denmark 2025 in Berlingske’s annual award for his discoveries in observational astronomy and his contribution to our understanding of the early Universe.
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The first galaxies in the Universe were born enshrouded in a “foggy” gas, and could not be seen clearly until they had cleared up this fog. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers led by astronomers at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen has now detected the hitherto most distant — and hence earliest — sign of this important epoch in the history of the Universe. A galaxy, seen only 330 million years after the Big Bang, has formed a bubble of transparent gas around itself, revealing that the epoch began earlier than thought. The result has been published in the prestigious journal Nature.
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Mapping cosmic history: An international team of researchers, led by astronomers at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, has released a comprehensive study on how galaxies and their dark matter have evolved across most of the history of the Universe. Spanning 11 billion years, this unprecedented survey reveals unexpected patterns in galaxy mass, growth rates, and the relationship between galaxies and dark matter. The study challenges existing models of galaxy formation and hints at a new understanding of how these immense cosmic structures emerged.
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In the past few years, the James Webb Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of how the first stars and galaxies formed in the early Universe. Now, an international team of researchers, led by astronomers at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, have published the first, large-scale study of more than 600 galaxies observed within the first billion years after the Big Bang. This survey moves the field from studying the first few discoveries with Webb, to establishing large, statistical samples of galaxies. Intriguingly, this study reveals how some of the earliest galaxies accrete massive amounts of pristine gas from their surroundings, a sign that we are now seeing the formation of galaxies in progress.
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Congratulations to PhD student Peng Pei who has been awarded the KHMW Young Talent Graduation Award for Astronomy by the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, for his master’s thesis at Leiden.
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Congratulations to Charlotte Mason who has been awarded a large grant from the European Research Council. The grant will fund two postdocs and a PhD student that will become a part of Charlotte Mason’s research group and help studying how galaxies formed and affected the early Universe.
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Once again, the James Webb Space Telescope has expanded our cosmic frontiers: With the confirmation of two galaxies seen around 300 million years after the Big Bang, we are now closer than ever before to the epoch of the formation of the first galaxies. More than just another record, the galaxies are extremely bright, forcing us again to reconsider our knowledge of how structure forms in the Universe.
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Once again, the James Webb Space Telescope has expanded our cosmic frontiers: With the confirmation of two galaxies seen around 300 million years after the Big Bang, we are now closer than ever before to the epoch of the formation of the first galaxies. More than just another record, the galaxies are extremely bright, forcing us again to reconsider our knowledge of how structure forms in the Universe.
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