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.
Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a giant planet outside our solar system, called an exoplanet, hiding within one of the most intensely studied planetary systems in the Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomy
17 hours ago
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The young planetary system of the 23-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris (short: Beta Pic) is regarded as an iconic circumstellar dust disk, which hosts at least three giant gas planets. Discovered in 2008 by direct imaging, ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 9, 2026
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A team of astronomers, led by University of Warwick in collaboration with researchers at MIT and McMaster, have developed a novel method to use the properties of dust rings around stars to estimate the masses of newborn planets. ...
Astronomy
May 28, 2026
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Silicon carbide (SiC) dust is one of the most important ingredients in cosmic dust, the tiny particles floating throughout the cosmos that eventually give rise to new planets and stars. This compound of silicon and carbon ...
Fifteen years after Western astronomers first discovered "buckyballs" in space (soccer ball-shaped molecules that resemble a hollow sphere), they're back with stunning images and rich data generated using the James Webb Space ...
Astronomy
Apr 22, 2026
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This shimmering region of star-formation, a close-up of the Trifid Nebula about 5,000 light-years from Earth, was captured in intricate detail by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The colors in Hubble's visible light image, ...
Astronomy
Apr 20, 2026
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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
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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
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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
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