The birth of the universe is always a mystery, as are its stars and galaxies. A CUHK professor has played key roles in an international astronomers’ 6-year project to produce maps of 10,000 galaxies using a new fibre-bundling technology while also collecting data on 24,000 stars in the Milky Way to help assess star populations in more distant galaxies light years away.

Travelling from the core of collapsing stars, newly detected gravitational waves may tell us about the meltdown which leads to these massive supernovas. Thrust into the universe from the explosions of dying stars, their ashes give birth to new worlds, so understanding supernovas is a step to ultimately understanding our origins.