Simulations Shed Light on the Formation of Stars in the Earliest Galaxies
Using some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, astrophysicists ran simulations charting the forces of the universe in its first hundreds of millions of years…
Star Formation
New Research Boosts Binary-Star Formation Theory
New research from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array makes disk fragmentation the strongest explanation for how close multiple star systems are formed. Using…
Infrared Dark Clouds Reveal Why Some Stars are Bigger than Others
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array telescope, astronomers surveyed the cores of some of the darkest, coldest, and densest clouds in our Galaxy to find…
New Spitzer Study Analyzes the Era of Star Formation in Galaxy Clusters
By observing the last major growth spurt of galaxy clusters, which happened billions of years ago, a newly published Spitzer study examines the rise and…
Whirlpool Galaxy Changes Astronomers Understanding of Giant Molecular Clouds
New research from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy challenges astronomers’ traditional views about stellar birthplaces, finding that giant molecular clouds are embedded in a…
GBT Reveals Hidden Details in Starburst Galaxy M82
Using the Green Bank Telescope, astronomers reveal never-before-seen details and present the most sensitive maps yet of HCN and HCO+ in the starburst galaxy M82….
New Research Implies That Current Theories of Star Formation are Incomplete
A new study from an international team of researchers has measured the lowest dust mass of a galaxy to date, leaving the researchers to believe…
Study Reveals the Explosive Growth of a Newly Formed Star in the Milky Way
A new study reveals the explosive growth of a young star, detailing that the newly formed star had such an explosive growth that it was…
A Link Between Black Hole Accretion Rate and Star Formation Rate
By comparing data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory with infrared observations by the Spitzer and Herschel space telescopes, astronomers discovered an almost linear relationship between…
Signs of Star Formation Near Supermassive Black Hole at the Galactic Center
Using ALMA, scientists have detected signs of star formation near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers using the…
Herschel Data Reveals Clues About High-Mass Star Formation
In a new study, scientists use Herschel data to view a giant cloud of gas and dust called Westerhout 3 and to study the early…
Herschel Discovers Water Vapor in a Molecular Cloud on the Verge of Star Formation
The Herschel space observatory has discovered water vapor in a pre-stellar core in the constellation of Taurus known as Lynds 1544. This is the first…
In McNeil’s Nebula, Protostar V1647 Ori Flaunts its X-ray Spots
Located about 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Orion, protostar V1647 Ori gave astronomers the first direct evidence that a protostar surges in X-ray activity…
Searching for the Link Between Star Formation and Black Hole Activity
To better understand the how star formation and black hole activity are linked, scientists are looking back 8 to 12 billion years, a time when…
APEX Provides Images of Dust near Orion’s Belt
New images captured by Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope show clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula Messier 78. The images were created by overlaying…
Gas Flows Back into Star-Forming Galaxies
To better understand how galaxies continue to turn one solar mass’s worth of matter per year into stars, a team of astronomers examined gas associated…
New Images of Orion Nebula Show Young Stars Hidden in Gas and Dust Clouds
European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have provided researchers with new images of the Orion nebula that revealed a host…
New Planck Mission Images Show Strange Haze and Cold Gas
Scientists are studying the new images from the Planck mission to hopefully gain a better understanding of our galaxy. The images show previously undiscovered islands…