Related topics: stars · planets

Europe's ExoMars mission arrives in the middle of dust season

The joint ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars 2016 mission is knocking on the Martian door to answer important astrobiological questions. While the mission's Schiaparelli module will focus on testing landing technologies, one of its scientific ...

The death of a planet nursery?

The dusty disk surrounding the star TW Hydrae exhibits circular features that may signal the formation of protoplanets. LMU astrophysicist Barbara Ercolano argues, however, that the innermost actually points to the impending ...

ALMA spots possible formation site of icy giant planet

Astronomers found signs of a growing planet around TW Hydra, a nearby young star, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Based on the distance from the central star and the distribution of tiny dust ...

Rosetta captures comet outburst

In unprecedented observations made earlier this year, Rosetta unexpectedly captured a dramatic comet outburst that may have been triggered by a landslide.

Stellar outburst brings water snowline into view

A violent outburst by the young star V883 Orionis has given astronomers their first view of a water "snowline" in a protoplanetary disk - the transition point around the star where the temperature and pressure are low enough ...

Behind the scenes of protostellar disk formation

For a long time the formation of protostellar disks – a prerequisite to the formation of planetary system around stars – has defied theoretical astrophysicists: In a dense, collapsing cloud of gas and dust, the magnetic ...

Saturn spacecraft samples interstellar dust

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected the faint but distinct signature of dust coming from beyond our solar system. The research, led by a team of Cassini scientists primarily from Europe, is published this week in the journal ...

Dust counter got few 'hits' on Pluto flyby

A student-built University of Colorado Boulder instrument riding on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft found only a handful of dust grains, the building blocks of planets, when it whipped by Pluto at 31,000 miles per hour last ...

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