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14 July 2010
Big or Small, All Stars Form the Same Way
How do massive stars form? This has been one of the more hotly debated questions in astronomy. Do big stars form by accretion like low-mass stars or do they form through the merging of low mass protostars? Since massive stars tend to be quite far away and usually are surrounded by a shroud of dust, [...]
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17 June 2010
Astronomers Witness Star Birth
Astronomers have glimpsed into the earliest stages of star formation, and have seen what could be the youngest known star at the very moment it is being born. “It’s very difficult to detect objects in this phase of star formation, because they are very short-lived and they emit very little light,” said Xuepeng Chen, from [...]
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25 April 2010
GOODS, Under Astronomers' AEGIS, Produce GEMS
No, not really (but I got all three key words into the title in a way that sorta makes sense). Astronomers, like most scientists, just love acronyms; unfortunately, like most acronyms, on their own the ones astronomers use make no sense to non-astronomers. And sometimes not even when written in full: GOODS = Great Observatories Origins Survey; OK [...]
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17 March 2010
Spitzer Spies Earliest Black Holes
The Spitzer Space Telescope has found what appear to be two of the earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes known. "We have found what are likely first-generation quasars, born in a dust-free medium and at the earliest stages of evolution," said Linhua Jiang of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead author of a [...]
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25 February 2010
This Week's astro-ph Preprints: Jean Tate's Best Pick
It goes by the super-catchy (not!) title "A Catalog of MIPSGAL Disk and Ring Sources". I chose it, over 213 competitors, because it's pure astronomy, and because it's something you don't need a PhD to be able to do, or even a BSc. Oh, and also because Don Mizuno and co-authors may have found two, [...]
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17 February 2010
Spitzer, the Wallpaper Factory, Does it Again
At the end of the proverbial day, space-based missions like Spitzer produce millions of observations of astronomical objects, phenomena, and events. And those terabytes of data are used to test hypotheses in astrophysics which lead to a deeper understanding of the universe and our home in it, and perhaps some breakthrough whose here-on-the-ground implementation leads [...]
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01 January 2010
MN112 – A New Luminous Blue Variable Found From Its Nebula?
Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) are a rare class of extremely massive stars that teeter on the very edge of being stable. The most famous of this class of stars is the well studied Eta Carinae. Like many other LBVs, Eta Carinae is shrouded in a nebula of its own making. The instability of the star [...]
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02 December 2009
Get the Big Picture of the Milky Way at the Adler Planetarium
Astronomy is all about getting the big picture of our place in the cosmos, but some pictures are bigger than others. This one is really big. The world's largest image of our Milky Way galaxy went on display today at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The image spans an area of 37 [...]
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23 November 2009
Baby Brown Dwarfs Provide Clues to Solve Mystery
Why – and how — do brown dwarfs form? Since these cosmic misfits fall somewhere between planets and stars in terms of their temperature and mass, astronomers haven't yet been able to determine how they form: are their beginnings like planets or stars? Now, the Spitzer Space Telescope has found what [...]
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10 November 2009
Great Observatories Combine for Stunning Look at Milky Way
All we can say is, "Wow!" In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA's Great Observatories — the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory — have collaborated to produce an unprecedented image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy. This is a never-before-seen view [...]
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04 November 2009
Multi-Planet System is Chaotic, Dusty
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured this infrared image of a giant halo of very fine dust around the young star HR 8799. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz. Just what is going on over at the star HR 8799? The place is a mess! But we can just blame it on the kids. [...]
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23 September 2009
Spitzer Watches Planet-Forming Disk Change Quickly
Something strange is going on around a young star called LRLL 31. Astronomers have witnessed a swirling disk of gas and dust which is changing rather quickly; sometimes weekly. This is likely a planet forming disk, however, planets take millions of years to form, so it's rare to see anything change on time [...]
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12 August 2009
Trigger-Happy Star Formation in Cepheus B
Combining data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Spitizer Space Telescope allowed astronomers to create this gorgeous new image of Cepheus B. Besides being incredible eye candy, the new image also provides fresh insight into how some stars are born. The research shows that radiation from massive stars may trigger the [...]
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10 August 2009
Spitzer Finds Evidence of Violent Planetary Collision
One of the main theories of how our Moon formed involves a violent cosmic collision between two planets. Astronomers have only been able to hypothesize what this collision was like, but now they have a better idea of what would ensue after such an event. With its infrared eyes the Spitzer Space Telescope [...]
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05 August 2009
Spitzer Changes Its Glasses, Sees Cotton Candy
The Spitzer Space Telescope has run out of the liquid helium that kept its optics cool — but the scope has already returned compelling new images as if to say: I don't need no stinkin' helium. At five and a half months, Spitzer's prime mission more than doubled initial expectations. It finally ran out of liquid helium [...]
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