Light from the darkness

(Phys.org)—An evocative new image from ESO shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming, along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already emerged from their dusty stellar nursery. The new picture was taken with ...

Detecting dusty clouds and stars in our galaxy in a new way

The center of our Milky Way galaxy is a wondrous place full of huge star clusters, dust clouds, magnetic filaments and a supermassive black hole. But it can be a confusing place, too, posing challenges to astronomers trying ...

Exocomets may be as common as exoplanets

(Phys.org)—Comets trailing wispy tails across the night sky are a beautiful byproduct of our solar system's formation, icy leftovers from 4.6 billion years ago when the planets coalesced from rocky rubble.

Shocking news about dust grains

(Phys.org)—The ubiquitous clouds of gas and dust found between stars provide the natal material for new stars and planets. These clouds are also dynamic factories that produce many complex molecules thanks to their rich ...

Even brown dwarfs may grow rocky planets

(Phys.org)—Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array have for the first time found that the outer region of a dusty disc encircling a brown dwarf contains millimetre-sized solid grains like those ...

Dust grains highlight the path to planet formation

(Phys.org)—An international team of researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the Japanese universities of Kobe, Hyogo, and Saitama used the Subaru Telescope to capture a clear image of ...

Do missing Jupiters mean massive comet belts?

(Phys.org)—Using ESA's Herschel space observatory, astronomers have discovered vast comet belts surrounding two nearby planetary systems known to host only Earth-to-Neptune-mass worlds. The comet reservoirs could have delivered ...

Interstellar dust and the sun

(Phys.org)—The space between stars is not empty. It contains copious but diffuse amounts of gas and dust; in fact about 5-10% of the total mass of our Milky Way galaxy is in interstellar gas. About 1% of the mass of this ...

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