A stunning eruption unleashed by the sun two years ago is providing clues about how stars form, scientists say. On June 7, 2011, the sun blasted out an enormous cloud of superheated plasma called a ...

Around 4.6 billion years ago, a young, hot star was born. The Sun formed from a cloud of gas and dust, and over time planetary bodies, including Earth and Mars, came to be. It’s unlikely that ...

It’s textbook astronomy. Planets form little by little, as material slowly congeals within the disk of gas, dust, and ice known to swaddle young stars. First, gravity gathers together bits of dust, ...

Our solar system's planets may have formed at differing times, determined by shock waves flowing from the young sun, one astronomer suggests. This theory posits that Earth is one of the youngest ...

The researchers traced gas inflow from ~2,500 astronomical units (AU) to ~40 AU from the protostar. (One AU is the average distance between Earth and the sun.) Their findings, published on September ...

Berkeley – Astrophysicists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have exploded one of two competing theories about how stars form inside immense ...

Imagine you’re a farmer searching for eggs in the chicken coop – but instead of a chicken egg, you find an ostrich egg, much larger than anything a chicken could lay. The smaller star, called an M ...

Astronomers have found evidence of a process that supports an alternative, more rapid approach to planetary formation, more top down than bottom up. By Katrina Miller When it comes to making a planet, ...

According to the results of a new study, stars orbiting near the centers of massive clusters have a much harder time forming planets than those located at the edge. The discovery was made possible by ...

Astronomers have observed with unprecedented precision a massive star in the midst of cosmic feasting. This discovery offers a unique window into the growth mechanisms of these giants. Located about 2 ...