Using the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array) telescope, an international team of astronomers has made the first direct observation of the formation of two gaseous planets around the star HD 142527. It’s a star that’s young in astronomical terms, with an age of about two million years more than 450 light years away from Earth.
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has allowed scientists to capture the details of the waves created within interstellar dust by the movement of the giant blue star Zeta Ophiuchi. This phenomenon is technically called “bow shock” and indicates the area between a magnetosphere and a surrounding environment.
Google has put online a web application for its Chrome browser called “100,000 Stars” that allows you to explore an area of the Milky Way which includes one hundred thousand stars. This is an interactive application with various features that allow to zoom in and out to go from the Sun to the entire “neighborhood” with all the possible intermediate steps.
ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope observed the star EZ Canis Majoris (EZ CMa), also known by the HD 50896 classification, which is about 5,000 light years from Earth. Represented with the pink color at the center of the image, it’s a really special star, because around it a gas bubble has formed which extends for about 60 light years.
The Hubble Space Telescope has produced a stunning new image of the globular cluster Messier 56 (also known simply as M 56 or as NGC 6779). In addition to admiring the beauty of the image, the collected data have allowed astronomers to determine that this cluster is very old, dating back to as many as 13 billion years ago, when the universe was very young.
