young stars Archives

May 15, 2024May 15, 2024 by Evan Gough

A Star Became 1,000 Times Brighter, and Now Astronomers Know Why

Artist’s impression of one of the two stars in the FU Orionis binary system, surrounded by an accreting disk of material. What has caused this star — and others like it — to dramatically brighten? [NASA/JPL-Caltech] — Artist’s impression of one of the two stars in the FU Orionis binary system, surrounded by an accreting disk of material. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers were surprised in 1937 when a star in a binary pair suddenly brightened by 1,000 times. The pair is called FU Orionis (FU Ori), and it’s in the constellation Orion. The sudden and extreme variability of one of the stars has resisted a complete explanation, and since then, FU Orionis has become the name for other stars that exhibit similar powerful variability.

March 28, 2024March 28, 2024 by Evan Gough

Webb Joins the Hunt for Protoplanets

This artist’s impression shows the formation of a gas giant planet embedded in the disk of dust and gas in the ring of dust around a young star. A University of Michigan study aimed the James Webb Space Telescope at a protoplanetary disk surrounding a protostar called SAO 206462, hoping to find a gas giant planet in the act of forming. Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada

We can’t understand what we can’t clearly see. That fact plagues scientists who study how planets form. Planet formation happens inside a thick, obscuring disk of gas and dust. But when it comes to seeing through that dust to where nascent planets begin to take shape, astronomers have a powerful new tool: the James Webb Space Telescope.

February 29, 2024February 29, 2024 by Evan Gough

How We Get Planets from Clumping Dust

This artist’s impression shows a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk, where dust grains gather together to form planetesimals—the building blocks of new planets. © ESO/L. Calçada

Our gleaming Earth, brimming with liquid water and swarming with life, began as all rocky planets do: dust. Somehow, mere dust can become a life-bearing planet given enough time and the right circumstances. But there are unanswered questions about how dust forms any rocky planet, let alone one that supports life.

November 17, 2023November 17, 2023 by Evan Gough

ALMA Takes Next-Level Images of a Protoplanetary Disk

This ALMA image of the young star HL Tauri shows rings of dust surrounding the star. The line patterns show the orientation of polarized light. It's the deepest dust polarization image of any protoplanetary disk captured thus far, revealing details about the dust grains in the disk. Credit: NSF/AUI/NRAO/B. Saxton/Stephens et al.

The ESO’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is perched high in the Chilean Andes. ALMA is made of 66 high-precision antennae that all work together to observe light just between radio and infrared. Its specialty is cold objects, and in recent years, it has taken some stunning and scientifically illuminating images of protoplanetary disks and the planets forming in them.

But its newest image supersedes them all.

June 28, 2023June 28, 2023 by Evan Gough

A Feline in the Heavens: The Smiling Cat Nebula

This is the Smiling Cat Nebula, aka Sh2-284. It's a stellar nursery of ionized hydrogen, powered by young stars in the center. If you can't see the cat, maybe you're more of a dog person. Image Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU

A stellar nursery sounds like a placid place where baby stars go about their business undisturbed. But, of course, a stellar nursery is nothing like that. (Babies are noisy and cry a lot.) They’re dynamic places where powerful elemental forces rage mightily and bend the surroundings to their will. And this one, even though its name is the drowsy-sounding Smiling Cat Nebula, is no exception.

May 8, 2023May 8, 2023 by Matt Williams

What Does the Milky Way Look Like?

Artist's impression of the Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: ESO

Beginning in 1610, when famed Renaissance polymath Galileo Galilei observed the night sky using a telescope of his own manufacture, astronomers gradually realized that our Solar System is part of a vast collection of stars known today as the Milky Way Galaxy. By the 20th century, astronomers had a good idea of its size and structure, which consisted of a central “bulge” surrounded by an extended disk with spiral arms. Despite all we’ve learned, determining the true morphology of the Milky Way has remained a challenge for astronomers.

Since we, the observers, are embedded in the Milky Way’s disk, we cannot see through the center and observe what’s on the other side. Using various methods, though, astronomers are getting closer to recreating what a “birds-eye” view of the galaxy would look like. For instance, a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) used the precise locations of very young objects in our galaxy (for the first time) to measure the morphology of the Milky Way. This revealed a multiple-arm morphology consisting of two symmetrical arms in the inner region and many irregular ones in the outer region.

March 7, 2023March 7, 2023 by Evan Gough

TESS Shows That Even Small Stars Can Host Giant Planets

Massive planets can form around low-mass stars, but they're rare. Image Credit: NASA

Can low-mass stars play host to giant, Jupiter-sized planets? Theories of planet formation suggest that it’s highly unlikely. But a team of scientists in the UK found that it’s possible, though rare.

December 19, 2022December 19, 2022 by Evan Gough

JWST Sees Furious Star Formation in a Stellar Nursery

Image of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3324) captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

The powerful James Webb Space Telescope is a mighty technological tool. Astrophysicists first conceived it over 20 years ago, and after many twists and turns, it was launched on December 2st, 2021. Now it’s in a halo orbit at the Sun-Earth L2 point, where it will hopefully continue operating for 20 years.

It’s only been a few months since its first images were released, and it’s already making progress in answering some of the Universe’s most compelling questions. In a newly-released image, the JWST peered deep inside massive clouds of gas and dust to watch young stars come to life in their stellar cocoons.

October 8, 2020October 8, 2020 by Evan Gough

Planets Don’t Wait for Their Star to Form First

The young star IRS 63 has baby planets forming around it while the star itself is still forming. Image Credit: Segura-Cox et al, 2020.

It looks like we may have to update our theories on how stars and planets form in new solar systems. A team of astronomers has discovered young planets forming in a solar system that’s only about 500,000 years old. Prior to this discovery, astronomers thought that stars are well into their adult life of fusion before planets formed from left over material in the circumstellar disk.

Now, according to a new study, it looks like planets and stars can form and grow up together.

June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 by Evan Gough

Another Collection of Newly Forming Planetary Systems. This Time from the Gemini Planet Imager

This figure shows the dust rings around young stars captured by the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey, or GPIES. The rings show a diversity of shapes and sizes, made more extreme by the different projections of the rings on the sky. (UC Berkeley image by Thomas Esposito)

Over the next decade, several very powerful telescopes will come online. Observing time on these ‘scopes will be in high demand, and their range of targets will span a whole host of topics in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosomology.

One of the topics near the top of the list is exoplanets.

But how will astronomers know where to spend their precious exoplanet observing time?