Congratulations to Prof Steven Balbus who has been awarded an MPLS Teaching Award.

Prof Balbus commenced lecturing on the year 3 core course on General Relativity in HT 16. He received this award for his "exceptional ability to integrate research and teaching — both presenting complex current developments to undergraduates in an engaging and accessible form, and deriving new research insights through the teaching process."

Professor Katherine Blundell is appointed OBE for services to astronomy and the education of young people.

We presented the first detection of the 670µm water transition in space in A&A, 601, L3. This transition can be used to trace the infrared radiation in the nucleus of galaxies providing key information on dust obscured events like the growth of supermassive black holes or extreme bursts of star-formation. This will help us to understand how galaxies evolve from star-forming spirals, like the Milky Way, to dead elliptical galaxies.

Oxford reflects fondly on Cassini as the end draws near

On Wednesday 26 April 2017, Cassini became the first spacecraft to ever plunge between Saturn and its innermost rings. In doing so, it came closer to the planet than any probe before it. This historic manoeuvre marks the beginning of the end, for what has been a landmark space mission.

Congratulations to Luke Ceurvorst who recently won the best poster prize at the 44th IoP Plasma Physics Conference on channelling results from OMEGA EP.

Many congratulations to Subir Sarkar who has been awarded the IUPAP-TIFR Homi Bhabha Medal and Prize 2017.

This prize is awarded for distinguished contributions in high energy cosmic ray physics and astro-particle physics.

You can read more here