Latest news from DAWN

A list of all news from DAWN, including highlighted publications, received grants, outreach activities & media appearance, job openings, and more…

Webb provides a new detailed look into the formation of the first galaxies

January 7, 2025

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.

Read More

Pengpei Zhu awarded the KHMW Young Talent Graduation Award for Astronomy

December 3, 2024

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.

Read More

Charlotte Mason receives large ERC grant to study structure formation in the early Universe

September 10, 2024

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.

Read More

Chinese-French mission to study exploding stars launched successfully

June 23, 2024

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.

Read More

James Webb discovers record-distant galaxy, again

May 30, 2024

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.

Read More

James Webb opdager rekordfjern galakse, igen

May 28, 2024

Endnu engang har rumteleskopet James Webb udvidet vores kosmiske grænse: Med bekræftelsen af to galakser set omkring 300 millioner år efter Big Bang er vi nu tættere end nogensinde før på epoken for skabelsen af de første galakser. Mere end blot en ny rekord, er galakserne ekstremt klare, og tvinger os dermed til at genoverveje vores viden om, hvordan struktur dannes i Universet.

Read More

Invisible Galaxies, Through a Scientist’s Eyes

May 28, 2024

Glimpsing into the galaxies of the past: that is the daunting task that students from the University of Copenhagen have undertaken by analysing so-called Lyman-α emission. While this radiation, stemming from hydrogen, is difficult to observe, investigating alternative quantities from light spectra can depict a more accurate representation of early galaxies and their characteristics.

Read More

First results from ESA’s space telescope Euclid

May 23, 2024

Today, the first scientific studies using data from ESA’s latest space telescope, Euclid, have been released. One of these studies, led by researchers at the Cosmic Dawn Center at the Niels Bohr Institute and DTU Space, utilizes the telescopes’ enormous field of view and infrared detectors to look for rare galaxies in the early Universe that are invisible in normal light. This work marks a first step toward a grand survey exploring the dawn of the cosmos.

Read More

Largest James Webb program yet approved: led by researchers at the Cosmic Dawn Center

April 26, 2024

For the third time since its launch, researchers all over the world have entered the annual selection process for observing time at the James Webb Space Telescope. Among the successful proposals that have now been selected by the committee is the largest program ever conducted with Webb, “COSMOS-3D”, led by assistant professor Koki Kakiichi at the Cosmic Dawn Center. The program aims to map the early Universe in 3D, exploring how galaxies in this epoch evolved and are distributed in space.

Read More

Giants of the Universe: Francesco Valentino receives grant to join the Cosmic Dawn Center

November 30, 2023

Congratulations to Francesco Valentino who has been awarded a large Sapere Aude grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark to join us here at DAWN, leading a project to investigate the most massive galaxies of the early Universe.

Read More