Vega Older Than Previously Thought, Could Harbor Life
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…
Stars
WISE Discovers Mystery Dust Around an Unusual Class of Interacting Binary Stars
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…
Star Formation in the Universe has Decreased Drastically
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…
HR 8752 Reveals Crucial ‘Missing Link’ in the Evolution of Hypergiant Stars
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…
New Findings on the Birth of Distant Suns
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…
Volunteer Scientists Aid in Discovery of Four-Star Planet PH1
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…
Astronomers Discover Star Orbiting the Black Hole at Center of the Milky Way
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….
Ultramassive Stars of Cluster R136 Were Created from the Merger of Lighter Stars
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…
LCLS Measurements Challenge Plasma Theories
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…
Examining the Accuracy of the Spectral Energy Distribution Models
In a new study, a team of astronomers set out to evaluate the accuracy of the spectral energy distribution (SED) models, finding that the models…
VLT Reveals that O Stars, Which Drive the Evolution of Galaxies, Don’t Live Alone
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope to study a sample of 71 O-type single stars and stars in pairs in six nearby young star clusters in…
Accretion Around TW Hydrae
While studying TW Hydrae, a relatively young star in the TW Hydrae stellar association, astronomers were able to track an accretion flare spectroscopically, providing direct…
Herschel Image of the Vela C Region
A new image from the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory shows Vela C, a massive star nursery that is 2,300 light-years from the Sun…
Hubble Captures Image of a Carbon Star
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of U Cam coughing out a spherical shell of gas as a layer of helium around its core…
Mysterious Disappearance of Dust Ring Leaves Astronomers Searching for Solutions
First seen by the NASA Infrared Astronomical Satellite in 1983, the dusty disk around a young sun-like star called TYC 8241 2652 has disappeared, leaving…
“Impossible” Discovery, Red Dwarf Binaries with Orbital Periods of 2.5 Hours
While studying the brightness of stars in near-infrared light, a team of astronomers discovered several red dwarf binaries with orbital periods significantly shorter than the…
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…
NASA Data Reveals Significant Changes in Exoplanet’s Atmosphere
Similar to Jupiter, exoplanet HD 189733b is a gas giant that circles its star, named HD 189733A, at a distance of only 3 million miles…