Search Results for: Centaurus

Astronomers have found a core burning star, like our own Sun, that’s only 16% larger than Jupiter; although, it has 96 times as much mass. The observations were made using the European Southern Observatory’s 8.2m VLT Kueyen telescope in Chile. Astronomers watched tracked 60 stars which were known to have a regular dip in brightness, when a dimmer object was passing in front. This survey found 7 of these low mass stars which eclipsed their brighter companion.

Early star formation is a bit of a puzzle for astronomers, since all the stars that we can see formed out of molecular gas and dust, which are produced in stars. How did the first ones form without any gas and dust? One class of galaxies, called Blue Dwarf Galaxies may offer some clues. They contain interstellar clouds which are similar to the material that would have been present in the early Universe. And these galaxies can have active regions of furious star formation. New research from the European Southern Observatory has targeted one of these Blue Dwarfs to try and understand the process better.

Globular star clusters – groupings of millions stars in close formation – are some of the most beautiful objects in the sky. Our own Milky Way has about 200 of them, but astronomers believe we used to have many more. Astronomers think that these star clusters might actually be all that remains from irregular dwarf galaxies were consumed by the Milky Way and had their outer stars stripped away. A team from Harvard and the Carnegie Institute of Washington observed 14 globular clusters in a distant galaxy, and realized that they’re so large, they nearly overlap the size of small galaxies, and have many similar characteristics.

Astronomers have used the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite to detect molecular nitrogen in interstellar space. Nitrogen is common in the Earth’s atmosphere, and believed to be the fifth most abundant chemical in the Universe, but astronomers hadn’t been able to find it in interstellar molecular clouds, where it’s believed to be very common. This discovery should help astronomers better understand the formation of stars and planets out of clouds of dust and gas.

Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found a diamond in space, and it’s big? really big. The object, technically known as BPM 37093, is a crystallized white dwarf star approximately 4,000 km across. The astronomers call it a diamond, because it’s made up of crystallized carbon surrounded by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gasses. It’s believed that this is the final outcome for many stars, including our own Sun. In five billion years our Sun will become a white dwarf and two billion years after that the carbon should crystallize to form a gigantic diamond.

Image credit: ESO An international survey by the European Southern Observatory has uncovered more than 1000 luminous red variable stars in nearby galaxy Centaurus A (aka NGC 5128). This is the first survey that’s ever been performed on a galaxy outside our own Milky Way. These stars, known as Mira-variables, pulse in a very specific …

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