VISTA peeks through the Small Magellanic Cloud's dusty veil

VISTA's infrared capabilities have now allowed astronomers to see the myriad of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy much more clearly than ever before. The result is this record-breaking image—the biggest infrared ...

Ancient stardust sheds light on the first stars

A huge mass of glowing stardust in a galaxy seen shortly after the Universe's formation has been detected by a UCL-led team of astronomers, providing new insights into the birth and explosive deaths of the very first stars.

Tune your radio: Galaxies sing when forming stars

A team led from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has found the most precise way ever to measure the rate at which stars form in galaxies using their radio emission at 1-10 Gigahertz frequency range.

Image: Star formation on filaments in RCW106

Stars are bursting into life all over this image from ESA's Herschel space observatory. It depicts the giant molecular cloud RCW106, a massive billow of gas and dust almost 12 000 light-years away in the southern constellation ...

ESO's dustbuster reveals hidden stars

In this new image of the nebula Messier 78, young stars cast a bluish pall over their surroundings, while red fledgling stars peer out from their cocoons of cosmic dust. To our eyes, most of these stars would be hidden behind ...

Image: Hubble explores the hidden dark side of NGC 24

This shining disk of a spiral galaxy sits approximately 25 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Sculptor. Named NGC 24, the galaxy was discovered by British astronomer William Herschel in 1785, and ...

The death of a planet nursery?

The dusty disk surrounding the star TW Hydrae exhibits circular features that may signal the formation of protoplanets. LMU astrophysicist Barbara Ercolano argues, however, that the innermost actually points to the impending ...

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