circumstellar debris disk
By Blocking the Light From a Star, Webb Reveals the Dusty Disk Surrounding It
AU Microscopii is a small red dwarf star about 32 light-years away. It's far too dim for the unaided human…
This is How You Get Moons. An Earth-Sized World Just got Pummeled by Something Huge.
Titanic collisions are the norm in young solar systems. Earth's Moon was the result of one of those collisions when…
The Youngest Stellar Disk Ever Seen, Just 500,000 Years Old
Unless you’re reading this in an aircraft or the International Space Station, then you’re currently residing on the surface of…
Planets Don’t Wait for Their Star to Form First
It looks like we may have to update our theories on how stars and planets form in new solar systems.…
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…
Planets Form in Just a Few Hundred Thousand Years
Astronomers like to observe young planets forming in circumstellar debris disks, the rotating rings of material around young stars. But…
Huge Stars Can Destroy Nearby Planetary Disks
Westerlund 2 is a star cluster about 20,000 light years away. It's young—only about one or two million years old—and…
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 Watched a Star System Die
About 570 light years from Earth lies WD 1145+017, a white dwarf star. In many respects it's a typical white…
Are the Gaps in These Disks Caused by Planets?
Astronomers like observing distant young stars as they form. Stars are born out of a molecular cloud, and once enough…