Meet R136a1, the most massive star known. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, it's a hulking behemoth weighing somewhere between 150 and 200 times the mass of the sun. Understanding the upper limit of stars helps astronomers ...
Astronomy
Aug 18, 2022
0
262
(Phys.org) -- New research suggests that billions of stars in our galaxy have captured rogue planets that once roamed interstellar space. The nomad worlds, which were kicked out of the star systems in which they formed, occasionally ...
Astronomy
Apr 17, 2012
16
0
A newborn star typically goes through four stages of adolescence. It begins life as a protostar still enshrouded in its natal molecular cloud, accreting new material and developing a proto-planetary disc. Slowly, stellar ...
Astronomy
Jun 13, 2016
5
196
The Tarantula Nebula, seen in this image by the Spitzer Space Telescope, was one of the first targets studied by the infrared observatory after its launch in 2003, and the telescope has revisited it many times since. Now ...
Astronomy
Jan 27, 2020
6
428
Astronomers have discovered a 'hot molecular core', a cocoon of molecules surrounding a newborn massive star, for the first time outside our Galaxy. The discovery, which marks the first important step for observational studies ...
Astronomy
Sep 29, 2016
0
835
When NASA announced the discovery of over 1,200 new potential planets spotted by the Kepler Space Telescope, almost a quarter of them were thought to be Super-Earths. Now, new research suggests that these massive rocky planets ...
Astronomy
Sep 16, 2011
38
0
(Phys.org) —Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have obtained a vivid close-up view of material streaming away from a newborn star. By looking at the glow coming from carbon monoxide ...
Astronomy
Aug 20, 2013
12
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- As part of its Hubble Heritage program, NASA has released an image, taken by a team led by UA astronomer Rodger Thompson, of a galaxy that resembles a snowflake.
Astronomy
Jan 18, 2010
1
1
(Phys.org)—At first glance, the center of the Milky Way seems like a very inhospitable place to try to form a planet. Stars crowd each other as they whiz through space like cars on a rush-hour freeway. Supernova explosions ...
Astronomy
Sep 11, 2012
17
0
(Phys.org) —ESO's Very Large Telescope has captured an intriguing star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud—one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. This sharp image reveals two distinctive glowing clouds of ...
Astronomy
Aug 7, 2013
0
1
