When you buy through links in our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn commission. An illustration of the “dust trap” around the newborn star IRS 48. | Credit: ESO/L. Calçada Scientists have long wondered how the complex molecules necessary for life formed in the turbulent and violent environment of the Sun in its… Read More »
A very young star formed within the dark cloud L1527 (top left), the “Cosmic Rocks” (top right), the Tarantula Nebula (bottom left), and the Chameleon I molecular cloud (bottom right).NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team. Image processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Mehdi Zamani (ESA/Webb). NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has opened… Read More »
The extreme explosion of a young Sun-like star suggests that newly developing planets must exist in a very wild environment. A team of scientists from the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) used the Submillimeter Array (SMA), an array of telescopes on Maunakea in Hawaii, to observe the young star HD 283572. The team watched as HD… Read More »
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to paint a picture of burger-shaped, planet-forming material around a young star. Delicious research conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Ice Age team led to the creation of the first detailed 2-D inventory of ice in the so-called proto-planetary disk, the type of structure from which… Read More »
Astronomers have discovered the first example of a rotating disk of material feeding a young star in a galaxy outside the Milky Way. The disk is nearly identical to those found around baby stars in the Milky Way and shows that stars and planets form in other galaxies just as they do in our own.… Read More »