star formation – Astronomy Now

Heat blast is smoking gun for how the Galaxy’s most extreme stars form

22 May 2020 Keith Cooper

A powerful wave of thermal radiation caught rippling through an accretionary disc of gas surrounding a distant protostar could be the strongest evidence yet for how the most massive stars in the Universe form.

Hubble marks 30th anniversary with spectacular peek into the Large Magellanic Cloud

24 April 2020 Astronomy Now

NASA and the European Space Agency marked the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30th anniversary with a colourful look at a vast star-forming region inside the Large Magellanic Cloud

Hubble peers into the heart of the Lagoon Nebula

19 April 2018 Astronomy Now

Marking its 28th anniversary in space, the Hubble Space Telescope peered deep into the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, capturing a spectacular vista of a vast star-forming region familiar to amateur astronomers around the world.

Dark clouds mask star formation

31 January 2018 Astronomy Now

A stunning new image of the Lupus-3 star-forming region shows billowing smoke-like nebulae snaking across a backdrop of brilliant suns.

New SOFIA observations help unravel mysteries of the birth of colossal suns

19 January 2018 Astronomy Now

Scientists are using SOFIA to survey young stars more than ten-times the mass of the Sun in an ongoing study to understand how massive stars form in our galaxy.

Cosmic snake pregnant with stars

3 December 2017 Astronomy Now

This Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the Cosmic Snake, a distant galaxy peppered with clumpy regions of intense star formation that appear warped by the effect of gravitational lensing. This giant arc-like galaxy is actually behind the huge galaxy cluster MACSJ1206.2-0847, but thanks to the cluster’s gravity, we can see it from Earth.

Forming stars in the early universe

21 November 2016 Astronomy Now

The first stars appeared about 100 million years after the Big Bang. When the universe was about 3 billion years old, star formation activity peaked at rates about ten times above current levels. Why this happened, and whether the physical processes back then were different from those today, are among the most pressing questions in astronomy.

‘Pillars of destruction’ in the Carina Nebula

2 November 2016 Astronomy Now

Spectacular new observations of vast pillar-like structures within the Carina Nebula have been made using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The different pillars analysed by an international team seem to be pillars of destruction — in contrast to the name of the iconic Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, which are of similar nature.

Hubble sees a ‘nuclear ring’ of star formation in galactic merger

10 October 2016 Astronomy Now

While NGC 278 may look serene, it is anything but. The galaxy is currently undergoing an immense burst of star formation as revealed in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. However, NGC 278’s star formation is somewhat unusual: why is it only taking place within an inner ring some 6,500 light-years across and not extend to the galaxy’s outer edges?

The secret life of the Orion Nebula

16 May 2016 Astronomy Now

Space bears witness to a constant stream of star births. Whole star clusters are often formed at the same time — and within a comparatively short period. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg have proposed a new mechanism that relies on the interplay between magnetic fields and gravitation to explain this quick formation, investigating a filament of gas and dust which also includes the well-known Orion Nebula.