Fast-moving gas from a young star – located in a star-forming region 400 light-years away – is giving astronomers insight into how planets form. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/no-lup-surprising-find-outflowing-gas-young-star…
Tag: protostars
Violent cosmic explosion revealed by ALMA: The merging of massive protostars?
The phenomenon of molecular outflow was first discovered in the 1980’s. Very high velocity motions were detected in the line wings of the carbon monoxide (CO) molecule, seen towards young forming stars. The high velocity motions obviously could not be gravitationally bound motions (such as infall or rotation) because of the required large gravitating masses. The first detections were in fact…
A growing stellar system directly fed by the mother cloud
For the first time, astronomers have observed a conveyor belt from the outskirts of a star-forming dense cloud directly depositing material near a pair of young forming stars. Scientists at the German Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) and the French Institut de Radioastonomie Millimétrique (IRAM) found that gas motions in the conveyor belt, dubbed a “streamer,” mainly obey the…
Using AI to unlock clues to the origins of the stars and planets
An artificial intelligence (AI) system analyzing data from the Gaia space telescope has identified more than 2,000 large protostars, young stars that are still forming and could hold clues to the origin of the stars in our Milky Way. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-06-ai-clues-stars-planets.html…
A submillimeter survey of protostars
The formation of stars involves the complex interactions of many phenomena, including gravitational collapse, magnetic fields, turbulence, stellar feedback, and cloud rotation. The balance between these effects varies significantly between sources, and astronomers have adopted a statistical approach to understand the typical, early-stage star formation sequence. The earliest stage is called the protostellar stage. For low-mass stars (those with masses about…
Tarantula Nebula seen through the eyes of Spitzer
Stunning new Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Tarantula Nebula in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy. Spitzer ended its 16-year mission on January 30. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/tarantula-nebula-spitzer-telescope-image…