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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Starting from the upper left and moving clockwise from large to small scales: upper left —"spiral-like" system; upper right — "bar-like" structure; lower right — rotating infalling envelope; lower ...