Planets are thought to form in the disks of dust and gas found around young stars. But astronomers have struggled to assemble a complete theory of their origin that explains how the initial dust ...

The astro-modified camera used to take this photo lets in the hydrogen alpha light that is normally filtered out. This modification makes the camera more sensitive to the red end of the ...

A number of extrasolar planets have been found in the past two decades and now researchers agree that planets can have a wide variety of characteristics. However, it is still unclear how this ...

ALMA, located in the Chilean Atacama desert, is the most powerful telescope for observing the cool Universe — molecular gas and dust. ALMA studies the building blocks of stars, planetary systems, ...

A recent astronomical discovery has shaken long-held beliefs about how planets form. For decades, scientists thought that stars much smaller than our Sun couldn't form giant planets. That theory just ...

Researchers have developed a new model to explain the formation of giant planets such as Jupiter, which furnishes deeper insights into the processes of planet formation and could expand our ...

A young star cluster does not begin life in the open. It starts buried inside thick clouds of gas and dust, hidden from ...