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The star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission nebula NGC 6357 that extends one degree on the sky in the direction of the Scorpius constellation. Part of the nebula is ionised by the youngest (bluest) heavy stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster and creates a bubble in NGC 6357. The presence of these surrounding gas clouds makes probing into the region even harder. One of the top candidates for the title of “Milky Way stellar heavyweight champion” was, until now, Pismis 24-1, a bright young star that lies in the core of the small open star cluster Pismis 24 (the bright stars in the Hubble image) about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Pismis 24-1 was thought to have an incredibly large mass of 200 to 300 solar masses. New NASA/ESA Hubble measurements of the star, have, however, resolved Pismis 24-1 into two separate stars, and, in doing so, have “halved” its mass to around 100 solar masses.

The star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission nebula NGC 6357 that extends one degree on the sky in the direction of the Scorpius constellation. Part of the nebula is ionised by the youngest (bluest) heavy stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster and creates a bubble in NGC 6357. The presence of these surrounding gas clouds makes probing into the region even harder. One of the top candidates for the title of “Milky Way stellar heavyweight champion” was, until now, Pismis 24-1, a bright young star that lies in the core of the small open star cluster Pismis 24 (the bright stars in the Hubble image) about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Pismis 24-1 was thought to have an incredibly large mass of 200 to 300 solar masses. New NASA/ESA Hubble measurements of the star, have, however, resolved Pismis 24-1 into two separate stars, and, in doing so, have “halved” its mass to around 100 solar masses.

Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula

Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula

NGC 281

NGC 281

A faint dot above a blazing inferno is possibly the first direct view of a planet outside our solar system orbiting a sunlike star. The infrared image, taken by the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, was released in September, 2008. At the time astronomers weren’t sure whether the body was a planet or a planetlike object, and it remains to be seen if it is truly orbiting the star.

A faint dot above a blazing inferno is possibly the first direct view of a planet outside our solar system orbiting a sunlike star. 

The infrared image, taken by the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, was released in September, 2008. At the time astronomers weren’t sure whether the body was a planet or a planetlike object, and it remains to be seen if it is truly orbiting the star.

NGC 2440: Cocoon of a New White Dwarf Like a butterfly, a white dwarf star begins its life by casting off a cocoon that enclosed its former self. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a caterpillar and the ejected shell of gas would become the prettiest of all! In the above cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright dot near the photo’s center. Our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf butterfly but not for another 5 billion years.

NGC 2440: Cocoon of a New White Dwarf

Like a butterfly, a white dwarf star begins its life by casting off a cocoon that enclosed its former self. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a caterpillar and the ejected shell of gas would become the prettiest of all! In the above cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright dot near the photo’s center. Our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf butterfly but not for another 5 billion years.

In this artist’s conception, observers peer through the dark dust of L1014 to witness the birth of a star. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected a faint, warm object inside the apparently starless core of a small, dense molecular cloud. If, as astronomers suspect, there is a young star deep inside the dusty core, it would have a structure similar to this illustration. Dark dust from the cloud, attracted by the gravity of the newborn star, forms a disc as it spirals inward. Often, the hidden birth of a star is heralded by bipolar outflows, jets of material moving outward from the star’s poles. Although astronomers do see a faint ‘fan-shaped nebulosity’ where they might expect the jet to be, the existence of the jet has yet to be confirmed.

In this artist’s conception, observers peer through the dark dust of L1014 to witness the birth of a star. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected a faint, warm object inside the apparently starless core of a small, dense molecular cloud. If, as astronomers suspect, there is a young star deep inside the dusty core, it would have a structure similar to this illustration.

Dark dust from the cloud, attracted by the gravity of the newborn star, forms a disc as it spirals inward. Often, the hidden birth of a star is heralded by bipolar outflows, jets of material moving outward from the star’s poles. Although astronomers do see a faint ‘fan-shaped nebulosity’ where they might expect the jet to be, the existence of the jet has yet to be confirmed.

Hubble spots giant planet orbiting tiny star

Hubble space telescope astronomers Tuesday report a jumbo-sized planet orbiting a pint-sized star likely formed within a million year’s time, a puzzle for planet formation theories.

In an upcoming The Astrophysical Journal Letters journal study led by astronomer Kamen Todorov of Pennsylvania State University, Hubble examined 32 young brown dwarf stars in the Taurus star-forming region about 450 light years away (one light year is about 5.9 trillion miles.)

The team reports the “2M044144” brown dwarf  possesses a companion  about 5-10 times heavier than Jupiter. The companion orbits some 2.25 billion miles from the small star, and must be less than 1 million years old, roughly the age of the brown dwarf.

“This is the youngest planetary-mass companion that has been found so far, and its extreme youth provides constraints on how it could have formed. The formation mechanism of this companion in turn can tell us whether it is truly a planet,” says Kevin Luhman of the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Pennsylvania State University, in a statement. Most likely, the companion formed from the collapse of a dust cloud to become a planet-like object — or sub-brown dwarf to astronomers — in such a short time, as opposed to the the tens of millions of years needed for planets to form from the residual dust disks surrounding young stars.

Double stars, or binary stars, are thought to form this way (called “cloud fragmentation”), but astronomers had not seen evidence of planet-sized objects created in this manner. “I thoroughly agree with the conclusion that this system likely formed in the same way that binary stars form, through fragmentation,” says planetary theorist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (D.C.) Boss predicted such a quickie planet possibility in a 2001 The Astrophysical Journal paper

Astronomers witness a star being born

Astronomers have glimpsed what could be the youngest known star at the very moment it is being born. Not yet fully developed into a true star, the object is in the earliest stages of star formation and has just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust.

Scientists found the object using the Submillimeter Array in Hawaii and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Known as L1448-IRS2E, it’s located in the Perseus star-forming region about 800 light-years away in our Milky Way Galaxy.

Stars form out of large, cold, dense regions of gas and dust called molecular clouds that exist throughout the galaxy. Astronomers think L1448-IRS2E is in between the prestellar phase, a particularly dense region of a molecular cloud first begins to clump together, and the protostar phase, when gravity has pulled enough material together to form a dense, hot core out of the surrounding envelope.

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