Latest Cosmic dust Stories

[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] A new image of the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s Belt, shows clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The observations, made with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope[1], use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed. Dust may sound boring and uninteresting — the surface grime that hides the beauty of an...

Images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) reveal an old star in the throes of a fiery outburst, spraying the cosmos with dust. The findings offer a rare, real-time look at the process by which stars like our sun seed the universe with building blocks for other stars, planets and even life. The star, catalogued as WISE J180956.27-330500.2, was discovered in images taken during the WISE survey in 2010, the most detailed infrared survey to date of the entire celestial sky....

Lawrence LeBlond for RedOrbit.com Scientists report in a new study that they have solved a long-standing mystery about how dying stars release their precious matter, compounds that are an important ingredient in the building blocks of future planets. Their discovery was made after observing the violent ends of three ‘red giants’ having their atmospheres ripped away by super winds containing dusty grains of silica, producing massive sandstorms in space. These grains were unexpectedly...

Particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 brought to Earth in 2006 by NASA's Stardust spacecraft indicate that Jupiter formed more than three million years after the formation of the first solids in our Solar System. The new finding helps test Solar System formation theories, which do not agree on the timing of Jupiter though it is certain the formation of this giant planet affected how materials moved, collided, and coalesced during the complex planet-forming process. Published in the February 1, 2012...

Japanese researchers discovered while studying grains of dust from the Itokawa asteroid that tiny particles of space dust bombard asteroids and give them their shape. The researchers analyzed the size, mineralogy, shape and geochemistry of five dust grains recovered by the Japanese asteroid probe Hayabusa. Hayabusa succeeded in returning over 1,500 grains of dust from the asteroid Itokawa when it parachuted into the Australian outback in June 2010. "Our findings show the landscape...

[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] Star formation in “dark markings of the sky” A new image from the APEX (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment) telescope in Chile shows a sinuous filament of cosmic dust more than ten light-years long. In it, newborn stars are hidden, and dense clouds of gas are on the verge of collapsing to form yet more stars. It is one of the regions of star formation closest to us. The cosmic dust grains are so cold that observations at wavelengths of around one millimeter,...

[ Watch the Video ] Researchers have measured neutral "alien" particles that have entered our solar system from interstellar space. The team used NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft to find the neutral particles, which make up about half the material outside the heliosphere. The heliosphere is the bubble in which our Sun and planets reside and is formed by the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. Electrically charged particles cannot...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has captured the best and most complete glimpse yet of what lies beyond the solar system. The new measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and the history of other stars in the Milky Way. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Earth-orbiting spacecraft observed four...

Scientists within the New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have compiled years of research to help locate areas in outer space that have extreme potential for complex organic molecule formation. The scientists searched for methanol, a key ingredient in the synthesis of organic molecules that could lead to life. Their results have implications for determining the origins of molecules that spark life in the cosmos. The findings will be published in the Nov. 20...

RIT professor co-authors Nature article and Gemini Observatory's 1,000th paper The discovery of 13 diffuse interstellar bands with the longest wavelengths to date could someday solve a 90-year-old mystery. Astronomers have identified the new bands using data collected by the Gemini North telescope of stars in the center of the Milky Way. Nature reports on its website today findings that support recent ideas about the presence of large, possibly carbon-based organic...