First look at gravitational dance that drives stellar formation

Swirling motions in clouds of cold, dense gas have given, for the first time, an active insight into how gravity creates the compact cores from which stars form in the interstellar medium. The results will be presented today, ...

What is the weather like on Venus?

Venus is often called Earth's "Sister Planet" because of all the things they have in common. They are comparable in size, have similar compositions, and both orbit within the Sun's habitable zone. But beyond that, there are ...

The Milky Way's central molecular zone

The center of our Milky Way galaxy lies about 27,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius. At its core is a black hole about four million solar masses in size. Around the black hole is a donut-shaped ...

The peanut at the heart of our galaxy

Two groups of astronomers have used data from ESO telescopes to make the best three-dimensional map yet of the central parts of the Milky Way. They have found that the inner regions take on a peanut-like, or X-shaped, appearance ...

page 2 from 4