ALMA Observatory
Do The Gaps in Protoplanetary Disks Really Indicate Newly Forming Planets?
Modern instruments like ALMA have revealed newly forming stars surrounded by accretion disks. These images are so sensitive you can…
Water’s Epic Journey to Earth Began Before the Sun Formed
The origins of Earth's water is a complicated mystery that scientists have been untangling for decades. Life is impossible without…
This Star is Blasting Out a Concentrated Jet of Material at 500 km/s
MWC 349A is a star about 3,900 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It's huge, about 38 times as massive…
Baby Gas Giants Cast Shadows on Their Siblings
A team of astronomers has caught glimpses of gas giants forming around a very young star. The nascent giants are…
We’ve Now Seen Planet-Forming Disks Around Hundreds of Young Stars. What Do They Tell Us?
Is our Solar System comparable to other solar systems? What do other systems look like? We know from exoplanet studies…
Astronomers See a Newly Forming Planetary Disk That’s Continuing to Feed On Material from its Nebula
Over the last few years, astronomers have observed distant solar systems in their early stages of growth. ALMA (Atacama Large…
The Strange, Misshapen Orbits of Planet-Forming Disks in a Triple-Star System
Whatever we grow up with, we think of as normal. Our single solitary yellow star seems normal to us, with…
Study Finds Bizarre Exoplanet Orbits for Binary Stars
There’s an iconic scene in the original Star Wars movie where Luke Skywalker looks out over the desert landscape of…
Astronomers Finally Find the Neutron Star Leftover from Supernova 1987A
Astronomers at Cardiff University have done something nobody else has been able to do. A team, led by Dr. Phil…
Here’s a First. Astronomers See a Moon Forming Around a Baby Exoplanet
Astronomers have discovered, for the first time, moons forming in the disk of debris around a large exoplanet. Astronomers have…