How do stellar binaries form?

Most stars with the mass of the sun or larger have one or more companion stars, but when and how these multiple stars form is one of the controversial central problems of astronomy. Gravity contracts the natal gas and dust ...

Image: Hubble finds smiling face in a hunt for newborn stars

This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), shows a patch of space filled with galaxies of all shapes, colors and sizes, many of which belong to the galaxy cluster SDSS J0952+3434.

Image: Intense star formation in the Westerhout 43 region

Hidden from our sight, the Westerhout 43 star-forming region is revealed in full glory in this far-infrared image from ESA's Herschel space observatory. This giant cloud, where a multitude of massive stars come to life in ...

Understanding star-forming galaxies

The more stars a typical spiral galaxy contains, the faster it makes new ones. Astronomers call this relatively tight correlation the "galaxy main sequence." The main sequence might be due simply to the fact that galaxies ...

Protostar displays a strange geometry

Using observations of molecules in the protostar L1527 taken by the ALMA observatory in northern Chile, a group of researchers have uncovered new clues to understanding how dust in a collapsing molecular cloud can shed angular ...

Image: Interstellar filaments in Polaris

Just as the new calendar year begins, and with it a feeling of new beginnings, so this network of dust and gas shows a portion of sky where star birth is yet to take hold.

Stellar activity can mimic misaligned exoplanets

The occultation of stellar active regions during the planetary transit can lead to inaccurate estimates of the characteristics of these exoplanets, especially the spin-orbit tilt angle. This was the conclusion of simulations ...

Brown dwarfs hiding in plain sight in our solar neighborhood

Cool brown dwarfs are a hot topic in astronomy right now. Smaller than stars and bigger than giant planets, they hold promise for helping us understand both stellar evolution and planet formation. New work from a team including ...

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