On average, one new star a year is born in a nursery somewhere in our Milky Way galaxy, at least according to the best current approximations. Stellar nurseries are located in giant clou...

Cambridge, MA Newborn stars peek out from beneath their natal blanket of dust in this dynamic image of the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Called "R...

In 1969, astronomers discovered that ammonia (NH3) was present in large quantities in interstellar gas clouds. The species was most apparent in regions of star formation where the densit...

Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are asteroidal or cometary bodies in the solar system whose orbits sometimes take them close to the earth's orbit. An NEO--and there are an estimated 4668 of the...

Approximately 250 extra-solar planets have been discovered in the past decade. Of these, about a third seem to orbit very close to their parent star, within one astronomical unit (1 AU i...

Stars emit X-rays. Our sun, for example, has a hot corona entwined with magnetic fields, and emits X-rays. Astronomers have discovered that young stars emit considerably more X-rays than ...

Austin, TX Having the sharpest pictures always is a big advantage, and a sophisticated radio-astronomy technique using continent-wide and even intercontinental arrays of telescopes is yi...

Austin, TX Our planet is changing before our eyes, and as a result, many species are living on the edge. Yet Earth has been on the edge of habitability from the beginning. New work by as...

Austin, TX Astronomers announced today that a mystery object orbiting a star 170 light-years from Earth might have formed from the collision and merger of two protoplanets. The object, k...

Astronomers have come to realize during the past decade that most newborn stars are surrounded by disks of gas and dust, material that both helps the young star to grow, and that might ev...