Stellar Evolution
A New Simulation Reveals One Entire Stage of a Star's Life
Stars begin as giant clouds of gas and dust that pull together through mutual gravity into a dense protostar. At…
Yes! A JWST Image of the Ring Nebula
Brace yourselves for great JWST views of the iconic Ring Nebula (M57). An international team of astronomers just released a…
Astronomers are Watching a Planet Get its Atmosphere Blasted Away into Space
What do you get when a hot young world orbits a wildly unstable young red dwarf? For AU Microsopii b,…
Astronomers Have a New Trick to Work out the Age of Stars
Determining the age of a star is surprisingly tricky and has wide error bars. It's only inside star clusters that…
Record-Breaking Magnetar was There in the Data All Along
The cosmic zoo has strange beasts that astronomers stumble across in the most fascinating ways. Not long ago a team…
A Dying Red Giant Star has Thrown Out Giant Symmetrical Loops of Gas and Dust
The Gemini South telescope has captured a new image of the glowing nebula IC 2220. Nicknamed the Toby Jug Nebula,…
Supervillains Take Note. Here’s a New Way to Destroy a Star
If you're an evil genius supervillain looking to freak out your enemy with a big messy space kablooie, here's a…
Astronomers Find a White Dwarf Pulsar
When astronomers talk about the "end states" of stellar evolution, several categories come to mind: black holes, neutron stars/pulsars, and…
A White Dwarf is Starting to Crystallize into Diamond
White dwarfs are the stellar remnants of stars like our Sun. They're strange objects, and astrophysicists think their cores can…
Astronomers Find a “Red Nova”: A Main-Sequence Star Just Eating its Planet
Back in 2020 astronomers observed a Red Nova, which while enormously powerful, is on the low side of energetic events…