Using the Subaru Telescope, the CFHT and NASA’s GALEX, astronomers reveal unprecedented views of the star formation process of a Blue Supergiant star located in the constellation Virgo. A duo of astronomers, Dr. Youichi Ohyama (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica or ASIAA, Taiwan) and Dr. Ananda Hota (UM-DAE Center for Excellence in the [...]

Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have found that HD 140283 is the oldest known star with a well-determined age, forming soon after the Big Bang. A team of astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken an important step closer to finding the birth certificate of a star that’s been around for a very [...]

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope captured an image of Zeta Ophiuchi, a star that is traveling at 54,000 mph and is about six times hotter, eight times wider, 20 times more massive, and 80,000 times brighter than the Sun. The giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is having a “shocking” effect on the surrounding dust clouds in this [...]

Vega is situated in the constellation Lyra, 25 light-years away from Earth, and it is the fifth brightest star in the sky. In 1983, astronomers discovered dust orbiting Vega, suggesting that it had a solar system. Vega was thought to be only a couple of hundred million years old, probably too young for any planets [...]

Astronomers discovered dust around an unusual class of interacting binary stars, a highly magnetic white dwarf star that is Earth-sized but weighs about 60 percent of the mass of the Sun and a cool object similar to a brown dwarf that is Jupiter-sized but has about 40-50 times the mass of Jupiter. Astronomers using data [...]

In a new study, an international team of scientists established that the rate of star formation in the Universe is now only 1/30th of what it was at its peak and that this decline will continue. While parts of the world experience economic hardship, a team of Portuguese, UK, Japanese, Italian and Dutch astronomers has [...]

A newly published study encompasses thirty years of research on hypergiant HR 8752, a star that is roughly 250 times brighter than our Sun and has crossed Yellow Evolutionary Void. A team of scientists from six European countries reported today they have finalized a thirty years long investigation of a hypergiant star that crossed the [...]

Using the Herschel Space Telescope and a method known as raytracing, a team of scientists produced a 3-D map of the dark cloud Barnard 68 in the Ophiuchus constellation, a possible future birthplace for a low-mass star. An astronomical team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg (MPIA) has gained [...]

A team of international astronomers, aided by volunteer scientists using the Planethunters.org website, discovered a circumbinary planet in a four-star system, called PH1. The discovery of planets continues to expand beyond the domain of professional astronomers. A joint effort of amateur astronomers and scientists has led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting [...]

A team of scientists discovered a star called S0-102 that orbits the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy in 11.5 years. This is the shortest known orbit of any star near this black hole and with future measurements it may provide scientists with the opportunity to test Einstein’s theory of general [...]

Using complex direct N-body simulations, scientists believe they solved the mystery of ultramassive stars of cluster R136 in the Tarantula nebula, discovering that the stars were created from the merger of lighter stars in tight binary systems. In 2010 scientists discovered four ‘monster’ sized stars, with the heaviest more than 300 times as massive as [...]

By targeting super-thin aluminum with X-rays at LCLS, scientists were able to analyze and pinpoint how much energy it takes to knock electrons from highly charged atoms in a dense plasma, providing possible insight into nuclear fusion and the inner workings of stars. Menlo Park, California — The first controlled studies of extremely hot, dense [...]