How do you map out the entire universe? For University of Toronto astrophysicist Dick Bond, you do it with five decades of passion, groundbreaking math, and a healthy dose of curiosity.
A fascinating new feature by the University of Toronto looks back at Bond’s legendary 50-year career—and his massive role in putting Canada on the global astrophysics map.
If you’ve ever heard the terms…
Annual Archives
2026
50 Years of Exploring the Cosmos: The Incredible Legacy of Dick Bond
Supercomputer Reveals How Exploding Stars “Stir” the Galaxy from the Bottom Up
New research performed on the Trillium/SciNet Supercomputer at the University of Toronto reveals a fundamentally different mechanism by which exploding stars shape the turbulent structure of our galaxy. The study, authored by Dr. James Beattie, postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), was accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
WORKSHOP: GWTC-6: The Bleeding Edge of Gravitational-wave Populations
From April 20–22, CITA will be hosting “GWTC-6: The Bleeding Edge of Gravitational-Wave Populations.” At this interactive workshop, LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA members will gather to analyze forthcoming catalogs of gravitational-wave (GW) data.
Special Open Session for CITA & UofT Researchers:While the main workshop is for LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA members, we warmly invite all researchers at CITA and…
How a Cosmic Cloud Becomes a Solar System: Scientists Discover the “EnDTranZ” Missing Link
Shantanu Basu, Interim Director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, is part of an international team that has revealed, for the first time, how infalling gas from star-forming cores gradually transitions into planet-forming disks. The study, led by Indrani Das from Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, combines numerical simulations with observations…
New Study Finds Evidence of Cosmic Explosions with Missing Black Holes
CITA researchers Maya Fishbach, Amanda Farah and Aditya Vijaykumar are part of an international team that has uncovered evidence of a rare form of exploding star, shedding light on one of the most cataclysmic events in the Universe. Their study, published in Nature today, confirms that black holes with masses larger than 45 times the mass of the sun are the result of previous black hole mergers,…
Astronomers pave the way in the search for supermassive black hole binaries in the hearts of galaxies
A team of astronomers including CITA postdoctoral fellow Aretaios Lalakos and CITA Professor Richard Bond, has bolstered the evidence for the existence of one of the most remarkable, yet elusive, phenomena in the universe: pairs of supermassive black holes (SMBH) in orbit around each other in the centres of galaxies.
Their research, recently published in the journal Astronomy &am…
CITA Postdoctoral Fellow James Beattie Wins Hubble Fellowship to Decipher the Origin of Magnetic Fields in the Early Universe
Dr. James Beattie, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and Princeton University, was awarded a prestigious Hubble Fellowship, announced the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) on behalf of NASA today.
This fellowship will allow him to build the next generation of supercomputer models to probe how the early Universe may have become magnetized by…
CITA Researcher Helps Locate the “Missing Link” in Giant Black Hole’s Power Source
New data from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has provided scientists with a first-of-its-kind look at the “exhaust pipe” of a supermassive black hole.
Sebastiano von Fellenberg, a postdoctoral researcher at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), is part of an international team that has identified the likely starting point of a massive cosmic jet — a powerfu…
AAS Honours Professor Peter Martin for Lifetime Leadership in Astronomy
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has announced Professor Peter Martin as the recipient of the 2026 George Van Biesbroeck Prize for his “long-term extraordinary or unselfish service to astronomy.” The AAS, a leading international body for astronomers since 1899, grants this award every two years to honour individuals whose lifelong commitment to scientific discovery and social good…