Twisting in the Wind
The process of star formation, once thought to involve just the simple coalescence of material under the influence of gravity, is now known to incorporate an exceedingly complex series of...
The Mysterious Born-Again Nebula
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About seven and one-half billion years from now, our sun will have converted nearly all of its hydrogen fuel into helium through fusion, and then burned most of that helium into carbon an...
More Than Half of Sun-like Stars May Have Rocky Planets
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Cambridge, MA
Astronomers have discovered that rocky, terrestrial planets might orbit many, if not most, of the nearby sun-like stars in the disk of our galaxy. These new results suggest...
The Birth of a Stellar Cluster
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On average, one new star a year is born in a nursery somewhere in our Milky Way galaxy, at least according to the best current approximations. Stellar nurseries are located in giant clou...
Spitzer Spies Young Stars in their Baby Blanket of Dust
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Cambridge, MA
Newborn stars peek out from beneath their natal blanket of dust in this dynamic image of the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Called "R...
Ammonia in Dark Clouds
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In 1969, astronomers discovered that ammonia (NH3) was present in large quantities in interstellar gas clouds. The species was most apparent in regions of star formation where the densit...
Near Earth Objects
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Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are asteroidal or cometary bodies in the solar system whose orbits sometimes take them close to the earth's orbit. An NEO--and there are an estimated 4668 of the...
Planet-Eating Stars
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Approximately 250 extra-solar planets have been discovered in the past decade. Of these, about a third seem to orbit very close to their parent star, within one astronomical unit (1 AU i...
X-rays from Orion
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Stars emit X-rays. Our sun, for example, has a hot corona entwined with magnetic fields, and emits X-rays. Astronomers have discovered that young stars emit considerably more X-rays than ...
Radio Telescopes' Sharp Vision Yields Rich Payoffs
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Austin, TX
Having the sharpest pictures always is a big advantage, and a sophisticated radio-astronomy technique using continent-wide and even intercontinental arrays of telescopes is yi...