A star is typically born with a disk of gas and dust encircling it, from which planets develop as dust grains in the disk collide, stick together and grow. These disks, warmed by the star to a range of temperatures above ...
Astronomy
Jul 7, 2015
3
57
A ring of dust 200 light years across and a loop covering a third of the sky: two of the results in a new map from the Planck satellite. Dr Mike Peel and Dr Paddy Leahy of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JCBA) presented ...
Astronomy
Jul 7, 2015
1
85
The space between stars is not empty—it contains a vast reservoir of diffuse material with about 5-10% of the total mass of our Milky Way galaxy. Most of the material is gas, but about 1% of this mass (quite a lot in astronomical ...
Astronomy
Jun 29, 2015
5
141
New work from Carnegie's Alan Boss offers a potential solution to a longstanding problem in the prevailing theory of how rocky planets formed in our own Solar System, as well as in others. The snag he's untangling: how dust ...
Astronomy
Jun 25, 2015
0
732
A group of Victoria-based scientists have made a discovery suggesting that the building blocks of planets may form earlier than previously thought. UVic astronomer, Mike Chen, presented the group's research at a Canadian ...
Astronomy
Jun 1, 2015
1
75
Our solar system, and other planetary systems, started as a disk of microscopic dust, gas, and ice around the young Sun. The amazing diversity of objects in the solar system today - the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets ...
Space Exploration
May 14, 2015
0
60
While the pastel tones and fine texture of this image may bring to mind brush strokes on an artist's canvas, they are in fact a visualisation of data from ESA's Planck satellite. The image portrays the interaction between ...
Astronomy
Dec 16, 2014
14
5
Rocky planets like Earth start out as microscopic bits of dust tinier than a grain of sand, or so theories predict.
Astronomy
Aug 27, 2014
0
5
(Phys.org) —A team of scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., has successfully reproduced, right here on Earth, the processes that occur in the atmosphere of a red giant star and lead to the ...
Space Exploration
May 7, 2014
0
0
A gas and dust cloud collapses to form a star. Amid a whirling disc of debris, little bits of rock coated with liquid water and ice begin to stick together. It is this stage of a star's formation that astronomers hope to ...
Astronomy
Mar 27, 2014
2
0
