What is stellar astrophysics? How did Hipparchus's discoveries influence astronomy? Why are galaxies different shapes? How do the orbits of comets differ from planetary orbits? How are comets, asteroids, and meteors different? How are supernovae involved in new planet formation? Why does an el...
Within these now-active nebulae, particles collide and start to form clumps. As these clumps accumulate more material, they grow in mass. Thanks to their own gravity, they pull in even more gas and dust from the surrounding star-forming region. Over a million years (give or take), these ...
After the death of our star, it'll leave behind the wispy remains of solar plasma — creating a beautiful planetary nebula enriched with newly formed heavy elements that will go on to create the next generation of stars and planets — and in its core will be a hot stellar remnant known ...
There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on the beach, but all stars have a life cycle. Explore the stellar nebulae where stars are born, learn about the types of nebulae and how nebulae form stars, and see examples of famous nebulae. Related...
These nebulae are formed during the death of a star of similar mass to the Sun. As it grows unstable, the star puffs off its gaseous atmosphere to form clouds around it. Stars larger than the Sun end their days explosively in a supernova, leaving a spectacular remnant in their wake. Ne...
More than three decades of the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope helped pierce the veil of time, photograph stellar nurseries and prove that galaxies collide. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope stands poised to place its back to the sunlight, step away from Earth and make the keen, ...
Astronomers have been bemused to find young stars spiraling into the center of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The outer arm of the spiral in this huge, oddly shaped stellar nursery — called NGC 346 — may be feeding star fo...
This takes us to the so-called “grand unified epoch.” By now, we are well into the realm of speculative physics, as we can’t produce enough energy in our experiments to probe the sort of processes that were going on at the time. But a plausible hypothesis is that the physical world...
uncontrolled fusion reactions are also what keep the sun and all the stars shining — in the core of a star the pressure of gravitational contraction increases the temperature and pressure high enough to fuse elements all the way from hydrogen up to iron, in a process known as stellar nucleosy...
There are several bright, fascinating nebulae in the Orion constellation. The most notable is, of course, Messier 42 in Orion’s Belt. This is the greatOrion Nebula, and it is one of the most studied areas of the entire night sky. ...