protoplanets – Astronomy Now

How comets break up and make up

2 June 2016 Astronomy Now

For some comets, breaking up is not that hard to do. A new study indicates that the bodies of some periodic comets — objects that orbit the Sun in less than 200 years — may regularly split in two, then reunite down the road. This may be a repeating process fundamental to comet evolution.

VLA reveals earliest stages of planet formation

18 March 2016 Astronomy Now

New images of a young star called HL Tauri made with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) reveal what scientists think may be the very earliest stages in the formation of planets. The scientists used the VLA to see unprecedented detail of the inner portion of a dusty disc surrounding the star, some 450 light-years from Earth.

Earth was grown from millimetre-sized stones

18 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Researchers can now explain how asteroids are formed. According to a new study led by Lund University in Sweden, our own planet also has its origins in the same process — a cosmic ocean of millimetre-sized particles that once orbited the young Sun.