Category Astronomy/Space

An image of the HD 106906 stellar debris disk, created by Erika Nesvold’s simulation, showing the ring of rocky and icy planet-forming material rotating around the star. (The star is removed from the image, masked by the black circle.) The different hues represent gradients of brightness in the disk material; yellow is the brightest and blue the dimmest. Credit: Erika Nesvold/Carnegie Institution for Science

Astrophysicists get rare peek at a baby solar system 300 light-years away. An enormous young planet ~300 light-years from Earth has given astrophysicists a rare glimpse into planetary evolution. The planet, known as HD 106906b, was discovered in 2014 by a team of scientists from the U.S., the Netherlands and Italy...

Schematic representation of rotating disc galaxies in the early Universe (right) and the present day (left). Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope suggest that such massive star-forming disc galaxies in the early Universe were less influenced by dark matter (shown in red), as it was less concentrated. As a result the outer parts of distant galaxies rotate more slowly than comparable regions of galaxies in the local Universe. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Observations of distant galaxies suggest they were dominated by normal matter. The presence of dark matter can explain why the outer parts of nearby spiral galaxies rotate more quickly than would be expected if only the normal matter that we can see directly were present...

Inside the Cats’s Paw Nebula as seen in an infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (left), ALMA discovered that an infant star is undergoing an intense growth spurt, shining nearly 100 brighter than before and reshaping its stellar nursery (right). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T. Hunter; C. Brogan, B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); GLIMPSE, NASA/JPL-Caltech

A massive protostar, deeply nestled in its dust-filled stellar nursery, recently roared to life, shining nearly 100 times brighter than before. This outburst, apparently triggered by an avalanche of star-forming gas crashing onto the surface of the star, supports the theory that young stars can undergo intense growth spurts that reshape their surroundings...

The spins of about 70% of the red giant stars observed in the clusters were strongly aligned in a study by researchers including Dr Dennis Stello.

A study of the internal sound waves created by starquakes, which make stars ring like a bell, has provided unprecedented insights into conditions in the turbulent gas clouds where stars were born 8 billion years ago. Astronomers used this asteroseismology approach to work out the orientation of the angle of spin of 48 stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The spins of about 70% of the red giant stars observed in the clusters were strongly aligned in a study by researchers including Dr Dennis Stello...