How did the Butterfly Nebula get its wings? It's complicated

Planetary nebulae form when red giant stars expel their outermost layers as they run out of helium fuel—becoming hot, dense white dwarf stars that are roughly the size of Earth. The material that was shed, enriched in carbon, ...

Making better measurements of the composition of galaxies

A study using data from telescopes on Earth and in the sky resolves a problem plaguing astronomers working in the infrared, and could help make better observations of the composition of the universe with the James Webb Space ...

WISE Eye Spies First Glimpse of the Starry Sky

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has captured its first look at the starry sky that it will soon begin surveying in infrared light.

Astronomers get a sizzling weather report from a distant planet

Astronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet. The observations enabled astronomers at the University ...

Seeing the Cosmos Through 'Warm' Infrared Eyes

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken its first shots of the cosmos since warming up and starting its second career. The infrared telescope ran out of coolant on May 15, 2009, more than five-and-half-years ...

A surprisingly bright superbubble

(Phys.org)—This composite image shows a superbubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located about 160,000 light years from Earth.

Stars shrouded in iron dust

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has participated in the discovery of a group of metal-poor stars shrouded in a large amount of iron dust situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This study involved a combination ...

Asteroid discovered by NASA to pass Earth safely

(Phys.org) —A newfound asteroid will safely pass Earth on June 8 from a distance of about 777,000 miles (1.25 million kilometers), more than three times farther away than our moon.

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