Before NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope ran out of liquid helium coolant in 2009, it captured stunning infrared views of targets ranging from galaxies to nebulae and everything in between. During the so-called “cold phase” of its extended mission, the observatory studied the Perseus Molecular Cloud on multiple occasions, capturing spectacular views of vast dust clouds with embedded star clusters. Some of those clusters pose a mystery: they seem to contain young, middle-age and old stars in close proximity. Older stars tend to move apart as time passes and finding such closely-packed suns in a mixture of ages is out of step with current ideas about how stars form. Says astrophysicist Luisa Rebull: “This region is telling astronomers that there’s something we don’t understand about star formation. It’s one of my favorite regions to study.”
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Astronomers studying the birth of planetary systems in the young (about 2-3 million years old) star forming region IC348 in Perseus as seen by the infrared cameras onboard the Spitzer Space Telescope have found thirteen stars in this complex with detectable discs, none of which is as massive as our early solar system’s disc.
VLA reveals dramatic new evidence about star and planet formation
A detailed study of young stars and their surroundings has produced dramatic new evidence about how multiple-star systems form and how the dusty discs that are the raw material for planets grow around young stars. Scientists used the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope to study nearly 100 newborn stars in a cloud of gas and dust about 750 light-years from Earth.
The birth of monsters: VISTA pinpoints earliest giant galaxies
ESO’s VISTA survey telescope has spied a horde of previously hidden massive galaxies that existed when the universe was in its infancy. By discovering and studying more of these galaxies than ever before, astronomers have, for the first time, found out exactly when such monster galaxies first appeared.