All articles tagged with #star formation
Astronomers identified SDSS J0715-7334, a Sun-like star now a red giant, as the most metal-poor star known (about 0.005% of the Sun) with an unusually low carbon content. Its chemistry implies it formed through a rare cooling pathway aided by tiny cosmic dust from Population III supernovae, possibly born in the Large Magellanic Cloud — a fossil of the early Universe that could guide the search for more ultra-metal-poor stars.
A new Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy IC 486, about 380 million light-years away, shows vivid regions of new star formation around the central bar and the bright active galactic nucleus powered by a supermassive black hole, highlighting how barred structures influence galactic growth; citizen scientists via Galaxy Zoo contributed to the study under ESA/Hubble.
Astrophotographer Greg Meyer captured a near-21-hour deep-space image of the Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/NGC 4039) in Corvus as they violently merge into a single elliptical galaxy, revealing orange-yellow cores, tangled dust, and sweeping tidal tails that fuel bursts of star formation; shot with a Sky-Watcher Esprit 120 at Starfront Observatory in Texas, the photo highlights the dramatic gravitational tug-of-war and the likely dispersion of most newly formed star clusters over time.
ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured a vibrant portrait of the Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33) with the MUSE instrument, separating light into blue (oxygen), green (hydrogen) and red (sulfur) to reveal interstellar gas clouds around young stars and highlight star-forming regions (H II regions) in the galaxy.
The James Webb Space Telescope imaged spiral galaxy NGC 5134, about 65 million light-years away, using its mid-infrared and near-infrared instruments to reveal dusty star-forming regions and embedded star clusters. The collected light dates from roughly the time the Tyrannosaurus rex was alive, offering a detailed view of nearby galaxies to inform understanding of distant systems. The image suggests active galactic nucleus activity may be present and illustrates the ongoing gas-star formation cycle shaping galaxies, as part NASA/ESA/CSA’s program to study nearby star-forming galaxies across multiple wavelengths.
Astronomers using the ALMA array produced the largest mosaic of the Milky Way’s center to date, mapping the Central Molecular Zone across roughly 650 light-years and revealing a web of cold gas filaments and dense clouds that feed star formation. The ACES collaboration, involving about 160 scientists from over 70 institutions, aims to test how star formation and chemistry operate in this extreme galactic environment. The dataset will sharpen our understanding of the galaxy’s evolution and will be followed by upgrades to ALMA and future telescopes for even deeper studies.
Using ALMA, astronomers released the largest image yet of the Milky Way’s center—the 650-light-year Central Molecular Zone—revealing a complex network of cold gas filaments that feed star-forming clumps; the ACES survey brings together 160 scientists from 70 institutions to study extreme central-galaxy conditions and test star-formation theories, with upgrades planned to probe even deeper.
Scientists using the ALMA telescope captured the most detailed map yet of the Milky Way’s center, charting the cold molecular gas in the Central Molecular Zone and its motions with spectroscopy. The four-year ACES survey reveals where gas is shredding into stars and planets, offering insights into the solar system’s origins and serving as a window into conditions similar to the early universe, all produced by a large international collaboration and mapping more than 70 molecular lines.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured a detailed infrared image of the spiral galaxy NGC 5134, about 65 million light-years away in Virgo, revealing glowing dust clouds and newborn stars that illustrate the ongoing cycle of stellar birth, death and recycling in galaxies.
Astronomers studying about 70 objects ranging from Jupiter-sized planets to brown dwarfs find no sharp mass cutoff separating planets from stars; instead, formation appears as a continuum where both core accretion and cloud fragmentation contribute, and metallicity does not clearly predict the object's origin.
A new, large mosaic image of the Milky Way’s center captured by the ALMA telescope array in the Chilean Atacama Desert reveals cold molecular gas across the Central Molecular Zone in unprecedented detail over a span of about 650 light-years, highlighting gas filaments and clouds around the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole. The image, produced by stitching many observations, is the largest ALMA image to date and offers insight into how stars form in extreme galactic centers, informing theories of galaxy growth and evolution. The study identifies complex chemistry across dozens of gas structures and foreshadows deeper studies with future upgrades like ALMA’s wideband sensitivity and ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope.
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array released the largest, most detailed image of the Milky Way's center, revealing long gas filaments feeding star formation and offering a connected view of our galaxy’s core that will be explored further with JWST and the ELT, though telescope time remains highly oversubscribed.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers mapped the Milky Way’s 650-light-year-wide Central Molecular Zone in unprecedented detail, revealing a complex network of dense, cold gas and molecules around Sagittarius A* to help explain how stars form in our galaxy’s extreme core.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope found that one of the universe’s brightest quasars appears to quench star formation not only in its host galaxy but also in neighboring galaxies within about a million light-years. The study of quasar J0100+2802 showed reduced ionized oxygen in nearby galaxies, indicating suppressed star birth likely caused by intense radiation and outflows from the active supermassive black hole, suggesting a galactic “ecosystem” where massive black holes influence galaxy evolution beyond their own hosts, especially in the early universe.
JWST observations of CEERS2-588 at redshift 11.04 (about 400 million years after the Big Bang) reveal a surprisingly massive (≈1.26 billion solar masses) and metal-rich galaxy with a high star-formation rate (~8.2 solar masses per year) and no AGN activity, implying efficient, episodic starbursts and rapid quenching that challenge current models of early galaxy formation.