Herschel sees budding stars and a giant, strange ring

The Herschel Space Observatory has uncovered a weird ring of dusty material while obtaining one of the sharpest scans to date of a huge cloud of gas and dust, called NGC 7538. The observations have revealed numerous clumps ...

The peanut at the heart of our galaxy

Two groups of astronomers have used data from ESO telescopes to make the best three-dimensional map yet of the central parts of the Milky Way. They have found that the inner regions take on a peanut-like, or X-shaped, appearance ...

Messier 61 looks straight into Hubble's camera

(Phys.org) —The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of nearby spiral galaxy Messier 61, also known as NGC 4303. The galaxy, located only 55 million light-years away from Earth, is roughly the size of ...

NGC 6334: A mini starburst region?

(Phys.org) —Stars are known to form in dense clouds of gas and dust, but why do some regions show prodigious rates of star formation, while others barely produce any young stars at all? Many of the richest sites are found ...

Modeling Jupiter and Saturn's possible origins

New theoretical modeling by Carnegie's Alan Boss provides clues to how the gas giant planets in our solar system—Jupiter and Saturn—might have formed and evolved. His work was published recently by the Astrophysical Journal.

Atacama Pathfinder Experiment: Setting the dark on fire

(Phys.org)—A new image from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile shows a beautiful view of clouds of cosmic dust in the region of Orion. While these dense interstellar clouds seem dark and obscured ...

Shocking news about dust grains

(Phys.org)—The ubiquitous clouds of gas and dust found between stars provide the natal material for new stars and planets. These clouds are also dynamic factories that produce many complex molecules thanks to their rich ...

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