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    Rare exoplanet orbits twin stars in ‘Star Wars’-like twist

    April 18, 2025, Categories  Uncategorized

    Astronomers find rare twist in exoplanet's twin star orbit
    A hypothetical office overlooking the Paranal Observatory in Chile, with the European Southern Observatory’s VLT visible with its laser on the hill, and the four small SPECULOOS telescopes nearer the foreground. In the sky is a depiction of the orbital configuration of the 2M1510 system with the two brown dwarf stars in red orbiting one another, and the inferred exoplanet on a polar orbit in white. Within the office, a poster celebrating the original discovery of 2M1510’s two brown dwarfs is on the wall, while diagrams and patterns showing the apsidal precession of the brown dwarf’s orbit caused by the planets are shown on the table the roof and the floor. Credit: University of Birmingham / Amanda Smith

    Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits at a 90-degree angle around a rare...

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    Hubble Sees the Force Awakening in a Newborn Star

    December 18, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Herbig-Haro Jet HH 24. Credit: NASA and ESA

    Herbig-Haro Jet HH 24. Credit: NASA and ESA

    Just in time for the release of the movie “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens,” NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has photographed what looks like a cosmic, double-bladed lightsaber. In the center of the image, partially obscured by a dark, Jedi-like cloak of dust, a newborn star shoots twin jets out into space as a sort of birth announcement to the universe. It does not lie in a galaxy far, far away, but inside our Milky Way. It’s inside a turbulent birthing ground for new stars known as the Orion B molecular cloud complex,1,350 light-years away.

    When stars form within giant clouds of cool molecular hydrogen, some of the surrounding material collapses under gravity to form a rotating, flattened disk encircling the newborn star...

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