Author: Dan Tamayo
In February of this year, a European-led team of astronomers announced that TRAPPIST-1, one of the 300 nearest stars to us, hosts seven Earth-like planets. Several of these could have the right temperatures to host liquid water, and are thus prime candidates in the search for life outside our solar system.
But a puzzle in the original paper was that when they tried to…
The TRAPPIST-1 Treasure Trove (Classroom Visit)
In February of 2017, astronomers announced an exciting development in our exploration of worlds beyond the solar system: not only do 7 Earth-sized planets orbit a nearby star known as TRAPPIST-1, but 3 of them may be able to support liquid water! To celebrate this discovery, the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and Discover t…
Research on gravitational waves by CITA Professor Harald Pfeiffer has been featured on CBC news.
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Research on structures in the interstellar medium by CITA professor Peter Martin and former CITA postdoc fellow Kevin Blagrave has been featured on AAS Nova, a website highlighting the most interesting recent results published in AAS journals.
AAS Nova page here
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The West African International Summer School for Young Astronomers (WAISSYA) is a week-long introductory course in astronomy for undergraduate science students from around West Africa (and beyond). This is the second time we are holding the school; the first time was in October 2013. Most of our 50 students will be from Nigeria, along with several students from Ghana, the Gambia, Senegal, Egypt,…
Even before exoplanets were discovered, astronomers thought that most planets with orbital periods less than a year would be spinning “synchronously”, meaning that, like the Moon around the Earth, they would always show the same side to their star. In our Solar System, Venus escaped this state, but it was believed that this peculiarity was due to the unusually massive atmosphere of that…
Rosetta mission’s Philae lander made contact with comet 67P, ten years after the mission began.
Read the full article her…