planet formation
It's Starting to Look Like Super-Earths Really are Just Great big Terrestrial Planets
New research shows there is a divide between how gas planets and rocky worlds form.
Spiral-shaped Planetary Disks Should Be More Common. Giant Planets Might Be Disrupting Their Formation
Planetary system formation is a process that involves astounding and complex forces. Humans have only just started trying to understand…
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…
This is an Actual Image of a Planet-Forming Disc in a Distant Star System
In 2017, astronomers used ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array) to look at the star AB Aurigae. It's a type of…
Astronomers Are Sure These Are Two Newborn Planets Orbiting a Distant Star
Planet formation is a notoriously difficult thing to observe. Nascent planets are ensconced inside dusty wombs that resist our best…
There Could be Planets Orbiting Around Supermassive Black Holes
A team of scientists from Japan have theorized that planetary systems could form around Supermassive Black Holes.
A Red Dwarf Star Has a Jupiter-Like Planet. So Massive it Shouldn’t Exist, and Yet, There It Is
Thanks to the Kepler mission and other efforts to find exoplanets, we've learned a lot about the exoplanet population. We…
Hubble Sees a Huge Dust Cloud Around a Newly Forming Star
The Hubble has detected a massive dust cloud 150 billion miles across around the young star HR 4796A.
A Planet With A 27,000 Year Orbit & That’s Just Where The Strangeness Begins
In the far-flung system of CVSO 30, two planetary candidates have been found with very different orbits - presenting new…
A Star With A Disk Of Water Ice? Meet HD 100546
Water ice in a disk surrounding a star might seem out of place, but the ice might be essential to…