http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Noted for harbouring Eta Carinae -- one of the wildest and most massive stars in our galaxy -- the impressive Carina Nebula also houses a handful of massive clusters of young stars. The youngest of these stellar families is the Trumpler 14 star cluster, which is less than one million years old -- a blink of an eye in the Universe's history. This large open cluster is located some 8000 light-years away towards the constellation of Carina (the Keel). http://www.physorg.com/news179068963.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:23:15 EST news179068963 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of astronomers from Ibaraki University, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Kanagawa University, University of Tokyo, Academica Sinica, and National Astronomical Observatory of Japan have used the Subaru Telescope`s Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (COMICS) to capture the first direct, well-resolved infrared images of a circumstellar disk around a young massive star -- HD200775. Their findings contribute to understanding the role of circumstellar disks in massive star formation in particular and to the birth of stars in general. http://www.physorg.com/news178310192.html Space & Earth Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:37:50 EST news178310192 (PhysOrg.com) -- The constellation of Orion is a hotbed of massive star formation, most prominently in the Great Nebula that sits in Orion's sword. The glowing gas of the Nebula is powered by a group of young massive stars, but behind it is a cluster of younger stars and clumps of gas. Still gathering together under gravity's pull, these gas clumps will eventually ignite into stars. http://www.physorg.com/news177602620.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:05:26 EST news177602620 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astrophysicists at the University of Warwick and Kiel University have discovered two earth sized bodies with oxygen rich atmospheres - however there is a bit of a disappointing snag for anyone looking for a potential home for alien life, or even a future home for ourselves, as they are not planets but are actually two unusual white dwarf stars. http://www.physorg.com/news177258394.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:27:33 EST news177258394 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have published the discovery of the farthest known object in the cosmos: a star that exploded when the universe was only 630 million years old -- only 4.6% of its current age. Light from this cataclysm had been traveling towards us for about 13 billion years, finally arriving here last April 23. http://www.physorg.com/news176733128.html Space & Earth Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:50:01 EST news176733128 The most probable place to find intelligent life in the galaxy is around stars very similar to our sun, a new study has found. http://www.physorg.com/news176661214.html Space & Earth Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:50:01 EST news176661214 (PhysOrg.com) -- The most distant object ever discovered is described in this week's edition of the science journal Nature. Two international teams of astronomers report their observations of a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the Universe was 640 million years old, or less than 5 percent of its present age. http://www.physorg.com/news175969717.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:30:09 EST news175969717 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Orion Nebula is one of the most beautiful sights of the winter night sky, its gas and dust glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation of a cluster of massive young stars. http://www.physorg.com/news175507575.html Space & Earth Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:07:12 EST news175507575 (PhysOrg.com) -- Supernovae, the explosive deaths of massive stars, disburse into space all of the chemical elements that were spawned inside the progenitor stars. http://www.physorg.com/news172501824.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:00:01 EST news172501824 (PhysOrg.com) -- Our understanding of star formation leans heavily on observations of stars like the sun, namely, those that are modest in mass and that are born and evolve at a relatively leisurely pace. http://www.physorg.com/news172237617.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:50:14 EST news172237617 The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of our galaxy is a giant complex of molecular gas and dust situated in the innermost 700 light-years of the Milky Way. Although the galaxy is over 100,000 light-years in size, nearly 10% of all of its molecular gas lies in the CMZ. Astronomers know that regions of dense gas and dust tend to produce new stars as the material coalesces and heats up under the influence of gravity. http://www.physorg.com/news170687664.html Space & Earth Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:15:25 EST news170687664 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of researchers has debunked one of astronomy's long held beliefs about how stars are formed, using a set of galaxies found with CSIRO`s Parkes radio telescope. http://www.physorg.com/news170429814.html Space & Earth Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:37:35 EST news170429814 (PhysOrg.com) -- For decades, astronomers have gone about their business of studying the cosmos with the assumption that stars of certain sizes form in certain quantities. Like grocery stores selling melons alone, and blueberries in bags of dozens or more, the universe was thought to create stars in specific bundles. In other words, the proportion of small to big stars was thought to be fixed. For every star 20 or more times as massive as the sun, for example, there should be 500 stars with the sun's mass or less. http://www.physorg.com/news169924281.html Space & Earth Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:12:23 EST news169924281 The existence of black holes is one of the most amazing and bizarre predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity. Despite his original misgivings about their reality, massive black hole holes are today believed to lie at the centers of most galaxies and to be the inevitable consequence of the demise of massive stars. http://www.physorg.com/news169819669.html Space & Earth Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:08:36 EST news169819669 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers working with data from ESA`s Integral gamma-ray observatory has disproved theories that some form of dark matter explains mysterious radiation in the Milky Way. http://www.physorg.com/news167493073.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:40:01 EST news167493073 This beautiful image gives a new look at Stephan's Quintet, a compact group of galaxies discovered about 130 years ago and located about 280 million light years from Earth. The curved, light blue ridge running down the center of the image shows X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. http://www.physorg.com/news166371617.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:21:24 EST news166371617 A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers. http://www.physorg.com/news165675129.html Space & Earth Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:52:39 EST news165675129 A new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows a supernova remnant with a different look. This object, known as SNR 0104-72.3 (SNR 0104 for short), is in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way. Astronomers think that SNR 0104 is the remains of a so-called Type Ia supernova caused by the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf. http://www.physorg.com/news163771339.html Space & Earth Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:03:09 EST news163771339 In a controversial new paper in the journal Nature, astronomers from Queen's University Belfast have proposed a new physical interpretation of a supernova discovered on 7th November 2008. http://www.physorg.com/news163760815.html Space & Earth Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:07:23 EST news163760815 The colossal stellar explosions called supernovae come in many kinds and flavours. Some of them are produced when a massive star reaches the end of its life in a sudden gravitational collapse. Astronomers have just found one of these explosions that defies the current classification scheme. The results of this research have been published in Nature, and Calar Alto has contributed to this discovery. http://www.physorg.com/news163397750.html Space & Earth Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:16:41 EST news163397750 The massive Arches Cluster is a rather peculiar star cluster. It is located 25 000 light-years away towards the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), and contains about a thousand young, massive stars, less than 2.5 million years old [1]. It is an ideal laboratory to study how massive stars are born in extreme conditions as it is close to the centre of our Milky Way, where it experiences huge opposing forces from the stars, gas and the supermassive black hole that reside there. The Arches Cluster is ten times heavier than typical young star clusters scattered throughout our Milky Way and is enriched with chemical elements heavier than helium. http://www.physorg.com/news163329933.html Space & Earth Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:27:01 EST news163329933 Research by astronomers at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies suggests that shadows hold the key to how giant star-forming structures like the famous "Pillars of Creation" take shape. http://www.physorg.com/news159686915.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:29:06 EST news159686915 A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand. http://www.physorg.com/news157996137.html Space & Earth Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:49:37 EST news157996137 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of astronomers, led by Stefan Kraus and Gerd Weigelt from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, used ESO's Very Large telescope Interferometer (VLTI) to obtain the sharpest ever image of the young double star Theta 1 Ori C in the Orion Trapezium Cluster, the most massive star in the nearest high-mass star-forming region. The new image clearly separates the two young, massive stars of this system. http://www.physorg.com/news157908478.html Space & Earth Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:28:35 EST news157908478 Where do supernovae come from? Astronomers have long believed they were exploding stars, but by analysing a series of images, researchers from the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen and from Queens University, Belfast have proven that two dying red supergiant stars produced supernovae. The results are published in the prestigious scientific journal, Science. http://www.physorg.com/news156693768.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:04:27 EST news156693768 The ESO Very Large Telescope has taken the best image ever of a strange and chaotic duo of interwoven galaxies. The images also contain some surprises -- interlopers both far and near. http://www.physorg.com/news156424771.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:20:22 EST news156424771 (PhysOrg.com) -- On long, dark winter nights, the constellation of Orion the Hunter dominates the sky. Within the Hunter's sword, the Orion Nebula swaddles a cluster of newborn stars called the Trapezium. These stars are young but powerful, each one shining with the brilliance of 100,000 Suns. They are also massive, containing 15 to 30 times as much material as the Sun. http://www.physorg.com/news154631619.html Space & Earth Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:15:02 EST news154631619 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study unveils NGC 604, the largest region of star formation in the nearby galaxy M33, in its first deep, high-resolution view in X- rays. This composite image from Chandra X-ray Observatory data (colored blue), combined with optical light data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red and green), shows a divided neighborhood where some 200 hot, young, massive stars reside. http://www.physorg.com/news152291894.html Space & Earth Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:19:03 EST news152291894 (PhysOrg.com) -- Theorists have long wondered how massive stars--up to 120 times the mass of the Sun--can form without blowing away the clouds of gas and dust that feed their growth. But the problem turns out to be less mysterious than it once seemed. A study published this week by Science shows how the growth of a massive star can proceed despite outward-flowing radiation pressure that exceeds the gravitational force pulling material inward. http://www.physorg.com/news151252308.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:31:48 EST news151252308 (PhysOrg.com) -- Some stars have it tough when it comes to raising planets. A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows one unlucky lot of stars, born into a dangerous neighborhood. The stars themselves are safe, but the material surrounding them -- the dusty bits of what might have been future planets -- can be seen blowing off into space. http://www.physorg.com/news148752771.html Space & Earth Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:12:51 EST news148752771