Stars form in massive clouds of gas called molecular clouds. As they form, they accrete gas from these clouds, and as the ...

SPHERE’s detailed images of dusty rings around young stars offer a rare glimpse into the hidden machinery of planet formation ...

Artist's conception of a protoplanetary disc, showing yellowish-gray rings of dust around a central yellow star. Clouds of dust and gas not far from our solar system are giving astronomers a rare ...

In the last 25 years, scientists have discovered over 4000 planets beyond the borders of our solar system. From relatively small rock and water worlds to blisteringly hot gas giants, the planets ...

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have peered deep into one of the Milky Way's most radiation-intense star-forming regions, revealing that Earth-like planets can form even in ...

Scientists have long been intrigued by the surfaces of terrestrial bodies other than Earth that reveal deep similarities beneath their superficially differing volcanic and tectonic histories. A team ...

New radio astronomy observations of a planetary system in the process of forming show that once the first planets form close to the central star, these planets can help shepherd the material to form ...

Dr. Jane Huang's research on planet formation in harsh environments, particularly within the Sigma Orionis cluster, offers surprising insights into the universality of planet formation. In a recent ...

New high-contrast images from SPHERE show a stunning variety of debris disks shaped by collisions of tiny planet-building ...

Image of the young nearby 2MASS1612 system (also known as: RIK113) taken with the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile. The image uses near infrared light that was scattered of the dust particles ...

A newly analyzed planetary system has turned up a world orbiting at such a skewed angle that it defies the neat textbook ...

Hit-and-run collisions between embryonic planets during a critical period in the early history of the Solar System may account for some previously unexplained properties of planets, asteroids, and ...