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.
For this new Picture of the Month feature, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has provided a fantastic new view of IRAS 04302+2247, a planet-forming disk located about 525 light-years away in a dark cloud within ...
Astronomy
Aug 29, 2025
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Stars die and vanish from sight all the time, but astronomers were puzzled when one that had been stable for more than a decade almost disappeared for eight months.
Astronomy
Aug 22, 2025
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Astronomers have discovered a vast and expanding bubble of gas and dust surrounding a red supergiant star—the largest structure of its kind ever seen in the Milky Way. The bubble, which contains as much mass as the sun, was ...
Astronomy
Aug 5, 2025
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Cosmic dust does far more than float through space. It's the raw material from which stars, planets and possibly even life emerge. Yet astronomers have long puzzled over where this vast amount of dust comes from and what ...
Astronomy
Jul 8, 2025
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What can exozodiacal dust, also called exozodi, teach astronomers about identifying Earth-like exoplanets? This is what a recently submitted NASA white paper—which highlights key findings from the annual Architecture Concept ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 10, 2025
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Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has observed a planetary nebula designated Messier 57 (also known as NGC 6720), dubbed the Ring Nebula. As a result, they found that the central ...
Many protoplanetary disks in which new planets are formed are much smaller than thought. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) scientists of the Leiden Observatory (the Netherlands) looked at 73 protoplanetary ...
Astronomy
Mar 26, 2025
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High-resolution near-infrared light captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows extraordinary new detail and structure in Lynds 483 (L483). Two actively forming stars are responsible for the shimmering ejections ...
Astronomy
Mar 7, 2025
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185
For the first time, astronomers have succeeded in observing the magnetic field around a young star where planets are thought to be forming. The team was able to use dust to measure the three-dimensional structure "fingerprint" ...
Astronomy
Feb 6, 2025
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70
Planets are formed when dust and rock in a disk around a young star collide and combine to form ever larger bodies. This so-called accretion is not yet fully understood. Astrophysicists at the University of Duisburg-Essen ...
Astronomy
Jan 22, 2025
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