Webb Sees a System That Just Finished Forming its Planets
Nearly 5 billion years ago a region of gas gravitationally collapsed within a vast molecular cloud. At the center of the region, the Sun began to form, while around it formed a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust out of which Earth and the other planets of the solar system would form. We know this…
Stars collided in galactic “demolition derby,” produced oddball gamma-ray burst
Enlarge / Astronomers studying a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) may have observed a never-before-seen way to destroy a star.Int'l Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani When astronomers spotted a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) in October 2019, the most likely explanation was that it was produced by a massive dying star in a distant galaxy exploding in a…
Betelgeuse is bouncing back after blowing its top in 2019
Enlarge / Artist’s conception in 2021 provided a close-up of Betelgeuse’s irregular surface and its giant, dynamic gas bubbles, with distant stars dotting the background. European Southern Observatory Astronomers are still making new discoveries about the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, which experienced a mysterious "dimming" a few years ago. That dimming was eventually attributed to…
A cosmic mystery: Astronomers capture dying star blowing smoke rings
Enlarge / A rendering of the star V Hydrae, or V Hya for short. In its death throes, the star emitted a series of expanding rings that scientists calculated are being formed every few hundred years, per UCLA astronomer Mark Morris.ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Astronomers have caught a red giant star going through its final…
Unusual Star Might be the Outcome of 2 White Dwarfs Combining...
Stars live and die on epic time scales. Tens of millions of years, hundreds of millions of years, even billions of years or longer. Maybe the only thing that surpasses that epicness is when two dead stars join together and come back to life. Astronomers at the University of Bonn in Germany, along with colleagues…
Can You Find a Planetary Nebula from a Couple Of Blurry...
A planetary nebula is one of the most beautiful objects in the universe. Formed from the decaying remnants of a mid-sized star like a sun, no two are alike. Cosmically ephemeral, they last for only about 10,000 years – a blink of a cosmic eye. And yet they are vitally important, as their processed elements…
SOFIA Follows the Sulfur for Hints on Outstanding Advancement
The high-flying SOFIA telescope is shedding light on where some of the basic building blocks for life may have originated from. A recent study published on The Astrophysical Journal: Letters led by astronomers from the University of Hawaii, including collaborators from the University of California Davis, Johns-Hopkins University, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences,…
The Oldest and Coldest White Dwarf Ever Found has Bizarre Dust...
When stars like our Sun exhaust their hydrogen fuel, they enter what is known as their Red-Giant-Branch (RGB) phase. This is characterized by the star expanding to several times it original size, after which they shed their outer layers and become compact white dwarfs. Over the next few billion years, it is believed tjat these…
Eta Carinae is Getting More Vibrant Due To The Fact That...
In addition to being one of the most beautiful and frequently photographed objects in the night sky, Eta Carinae also has also had the honor of being one of the sky’s most luminous stars for over a century and a half. In addition, it has been a scientific curiosity since its giant ejected nebula (Homunculus)…
In the far Future our Sun will Become a Strong Crystalline...
About fifty years ago, astronomers predicted what the ultimate fate of our Sun will be. According to the theory, the Sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel billions of years from now and expand to become a Red Giant, followed by it shedding it’s outer layers and becoming a white dwarf. After a few more billion…