News tagged with planetary formation

Astronomers discover a rare stellar disk of quartz dust

A research team of Japanese astronomers led by Dr. Hideaki Fujiwara (Subaru Telescope) has discovered a main-sequence star that is surrounded by a rare disk of quartz dust. Collisions of planetesimals, building ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 05, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (12) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Image: Hubble peeks inside a stellar cloud

(Phys.org) -- These bright stars shining through what looks like a haze in the night sky are part of a young stellar grouping in one of the largest known star formation regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 23, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

When stellar metallicity sparks planet formation

New research predicts the criteria needed for Earth-like planets to form around a star that have one-tenth the metallicity of our Sun. If researchers find small, rocky planets orbiting stars with lower metallicity, ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 10, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

A planetary system from the early Universe

A group of European astronomers has discovered an ancient planetary system that is likely to be a survivor from one of the earliest cosmic eras, 13 billion years ago. The system consists of the star HIP 11952 ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 27, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (13) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

A universal law for star formation

(PhysOrg.com) -- Star formation is studied by astronomers not only because it produces new stars and planetary systems. It also generates copious amounts of ultraviolet light that heats dust which in turn ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jan 09, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

From the Earth to the Moon: Resolving estimates of proto-Earth accretion with lunar-forming impact

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the more challenging fields of scientific inquiry is planetary formation – and most relevant is that of our own Earth and Moon. The current view, based on chronometry (scientific ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 14, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (8) | comments 16 | with audio podcast feature

Rocky planets could have been born as gas giants

When NASA announced the discovery of over 1,200 new potential planets spotted by the Kepler Space Telescope, almost a quarter of them were thought to be Super-Earths. Now, new research suggests that these ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 16, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (11) | comments 38

New class of stellar explosions discovered

They're bright and blue-and a bit strange. They're a new type of stellar explosion that was recently discovered by a team of astronomers led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Among the most ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jun 08, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (14) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

Want to make planets? Better hurry

Currently, astronomers have two competing models for planetary formation. In one, the planets form in a single, monolithic collapse. In the second, the core forms first and then slowly accretes gas and dust. ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 24, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 18

Flipping hot Jupiters: Why some planets orbit the wrong way

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the last few years astronomers have observed that in some extrasolar systems the star is spinning one way and the planet, a "hot Jupiter," is orbiting the star in the opposite direction. ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 11, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (10) | comments 23 | with audio podcast

Oxygen isotope analysis tells of the wandering life of a dust grain 4.5 billion years ago

Scientists have performed a micro-probe analysis of the core and outer layers of a pea-sized piece of a meteorite some 4.57 billion years old to reconstruct the history of its formation, providing the first ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 03, 2011 | popularity 4 / 5 (6) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

Birth of a baby planet

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Sydney astronomer, Professor Peter Tuthill, is one of an international team of astronomers who have announced a major step forward in the quest to find planets in orbit around ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 02, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (9) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Back to the roots of the solar system

(PhysOrg.com) -- Planets form in disks of dust and gas that surround young stars. A look at the birth places means a journey into the past of the earth and its siblings. Now, astronomers have been able to ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 17, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Shining starlight on the dark cocoons of star birth

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have discovered a new, cosmic phenomenon, termed "coreshine," which is revealing new information about how stars and planets come to be.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 23, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (6) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

The hot atmosphere of Venus might cool its interior: study

The heat in the atmosphere of Venus, induced from a strong greenhouse warming, might actually have a cooling effect on the planet's interior. This counter-intuitive theory is based on calculations from a new ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Sep 21, 2010 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (9) | comments 0 | with audio podcast