Stardust from red giants

Some of the Earth's building material was stardust from red giants, researchers from ETH Zurich have established. They have also explained why the Earth contains more of this stardust than the asteroids or the planet Mars, ...

Image: Orion A in infrared

Stars form within giant clouds of gas and dust that pervade galaxies like our own Milky Way. This image depicts one such cloud, known as Orion A, as seen by ESA's Herschel and Planck space observatories.

Galaxies as 'cosmic cauldrons'

Star formation within interstellar clouds of gas and dust, so-called molecular clouds, proceeds very rapidly yet highly inefficiently. Most of the gas is dispersed by stellar radiation, revealing galaxies to be highly dynamic ...

How do stellar binaries form?

Most stars with the mass of the sun or larger have one or more companion stars, but when and how these multiple stars form is one of the controversial central problems of astronomy. Gravity contracts the natal gas and dust ...

Understanding conditions for star formation

Researchers have demonstrated how a gas escapes ice at an extremely cold temperature, providing insight into star formation in interstellar clouds. The mechanism by which hydrogen sulphide is released as gas in interstellar ...

How Herschel unlocked the secrets of star formation

Surveying the sky for almost four years to observe the glow of cold cosmic dust embedded in interstellar clouds of gas, the Herschel Space Observatory has provided astronomers with an unprecedented glimpse into the stellar ...

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