Spiral arms cradle baby terrestrial planets

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 ...

Astronomers find elusive target hiding behind dust

Astronomers acting on a hunch have likely resolved a mystery about young, still-forming stars and regions rich in organic molecules closely surrounding some of them. They used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky ...

NASA satellites catch 'growth spurt' from newborn protostar

Using data from orbiting observatories, including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities, an international team of astronomers has discovered an outburst from a star thought to be in the earliest phase ...

Astronomers discover first step toward planet formation

Solving the mystery of how planets like Earth were formed is an important question for understanding the origin of life. Planets are thought to form when interstellar dust and gas collect in a protoplanetary disk surrounding ...

Image: Nebula churns out massive stars in new Hubble image

Stars are born from turbulent clouds of gas and dust that collapse under their own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses, a dense, hot core forms and begins gathering dust and gas, creating a protostar. This star-forming ...

Stellar super soaker

Located in the constellation of Perseus and just a mere 750 light years from Earth, a young protostar is very busy spewing forth copious amounts of water. Embedded in a cloud of gas and dust, the hundred thousand year old ...

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