Circumstellar dust as a research area focuses on the physical, chemical, and dynamical properties of solid particles in the immediate environments of stars, including protoplanetary disks, debris disks, and evolved-star envelopes. Studies address dust grain composition, size distributions, formation and destruction processes, and radiative transfer effects that govern spectral energy distributions and polarization signatures. The field integrates observations from infrared to submillimeter wavelengths with laboratory astrochemistry and dust analog experiments, as well as hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic simulations. It is central to understanding planet formation, disk evolution, stellar mass loss, and the feedback of stellar systems on the interstellar medium.
This month's NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month offers us a two-for-one on brand new stars—with some potential planets thrown in as well. This visual highlights Webb's views of the protoplanetary ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 3, 2026
0
86
An international team of astronomers has employed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a complex planetary nebula known as NGC 6302. The observations, detailed in a paper published Feb. 25 on the arXiv pre-print ...
Anastasios (Andy) Tzanidakis was combing through old telescope data from 2020 when he found an otherwise boring star acting very strangely. The star, named Gaia20ehk, was about 11,000 light-years from Earth near the constellation ...
Planetary Sciences
Mar 11, 2026
0
758
Ever since physicist Freeman Dyson first proposed the concept in 1960, the "Dyson sphere" has been the holy grail of techno-signature hunters. A highly advanced civilization could build a "sphere" (or, in our more modern ...
Astronomy
Mar 7, 2026
1
149
Yale junior Donglin Wu leads a new study showing that some of the biggest stars in the universe shed some of the smallest dust particles. It's fitting that Wu's first major scientific journal article as lead author focuses ...
Astronomy
Feb 27, 2026
1
39
For the first time, a much younger version of the sun has been caught red-handed blowing bubbles in the galaxy by astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The bubble—called an "astrosphere"—completely surrounds ...
Astronomy
Feb 23, 2026
0
97
An international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system that challenges long-standing theories of how planets form. Across our galaxy, astronomers routinely observe a characteristic pattern in planetary ...
Planetary Sciences
Feb 21, 2026
0
94
Just in time for Valentine's Day, space offers a heart-shaped greeting. The star Mira A, about 300 light-years from Earth, has released material into an expanding cloud of gas and dust resembling a heart. Both the amount ...
Astronomy
Feb 11, 2026
0
131
This stunning image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a dramatic interplay of light and shadow in the Egg Nebula, sculpted by freshly ejected stardust. Located approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation ...
Astronomy
Feb 10, 2026
0
39
A research team has investigated quasar variability by tracking optical to mid-infrared (MIR) wavelengths of variability information. This multiband joint analysis provides an opportunity to probe the dust structure in the ...
Astronomy
Jan 23, 2026
0
38
