Related topics: stars

Mapping the family tree of stars

Astronomers are borrowing principles applied in biology and archaeology to build a family tree of the stars in the galaxy. By studying chemical signatures found in the stars, they are piecing together these evolutionary trees ...

A star's birth holds early clues to life potential

Our solar system began as a cloud of gas and dust. Over time, gravity slowly pulled these bits together into the Sun and planets we recognize today. While not every system is friendly to life, astronomers want to piece together ...

A beautiful instance of stellar ornamentation

In this image from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), light from blazing blue stars energises the gas left over from the stars' recent formation. The result is a strikingly colourful emission nebula, called LHA 120-N55, in ...

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 hottest white dwarf in the Galaxy

Astronomers at the Universities of Tübingen and Potsdam have identified the hottest white dwarf ever discovered in our Galaxy. With a temperature of 250,000 degrees Celsius, this dying star at the outskirts of the Milky ...

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