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dust

Closely-Orbiting Stellar Companions Surrounded by “Mystery Dust”

November 14, 2012

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Artist’s concept showing a dust disk around a binary system containing a white dwarf and a less-massive M (red) dwarf companion. (P. Marenfeld and NOAO/AURA/NSF) Even though NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft — aka WISE — ran out of coolant in [...]

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The Case of the Disappearing Dust

July 5, 2012

Astronomy has always taught us that planets form from vast clouds of dust and gas orbiting young stars. It’s a gradual process of accretion that takes hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of years… or does it? Remove this ad

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M33′s “Object-X”

December 18, 2010

Often times, objects that are unremarkable in one portion of the spectra, can often be vivid in others. In M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, a star that’s barely visible in the optical, stands out as the second brightest source (and single brightest single star) in the mid-infrared. This unusual star has been the target of a [...]

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Could Mars Dust Be “Levitated” Away?

January 26, 2010

What could potentially be the biggest problem during a human mission to Mars? One NASA study says, surprisingly, that dust could be the number one risk for both humans and equipment. Human explorers could inhale the extremely fine but rough dust particles causing severe respiratory problems, and high winds on Mars could disperse the dust [...]

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Mysterious Alien Dust Hints at Violent Planet Formation

January 13, 2010

An artist’s rendition of colliding planets, the most likely explanation for the warm dust observed around HD 131488. Image credit: Lynette Cook for Gemini Observatory/AURA Five-hundred light years away, worlds are colliding, and they’re made of nothing we’ve ever seen. Last week at the 215th American Astronomical Society meeting, UCLA astronomers announced that they had [...]

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