Latest Star Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Stars with ten times or more the mass of our Sun should not exist. They push away the gas they feed on as they grow, starving themselves for fuel. Astrophysicists have been struggling to understand how some stars are able to overcome this developmental hurdle. A group of researchers led by the University of Toronto suggests that baby stars might grow to have great mass if they are lucky enough to be born within a corral of older...
ESA In this new view of a vast star-forming cloud called W3, ESA’s Herschel space observatory tells the story of how massive stars are born. W3 is a giant molecular cloud containing an enormous stellar nursery, some 6200 light-years away in the Perseus Arm, one of our Milky Way Galaxy’s main spiral arms. Spanning almost 200 light-years, W3 is one of the largest star-formation complexes in the outer Milky Way, hosting the formation of both low- and high-mass stars. The distinction...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have unveiled a new image of recently formed bright blue stars in the cluster NGC 2547. Astronomers using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the European Space Observatory's (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile took images of the stars while they were focusing in on the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). Despite the universe being roughly 13.8 billion years old, new stars and objects are...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers discovered a new type of supernova of a star about 10 to 100 times more massive than our sun. The Type Iax supernova is a fainter and less energetic explosion than the Type Ia, and may not completely destroy the white dwarf star; type Ia supernovae completely destroy their tiny white dwarfs. "A Type Iax supernova is essentially a mini supernova," says lead author Ryan Foley, Clay Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian...
NEW YORK, March 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- American Media, Inc. (AMI) today announced the appointment of Nathan Forster as Contributing Editor to Men's Fitness and Muscle & Fitness magazines. Forster, a former model and former professional tennis player, is a certified CrossFit trainer and competitor. He owns and operates Reebok CrossFit Fifth Avenue and Reebok CrossFit Miami Beach, and co-owns Rhinoco Fitness, a company dedicated to the full circle of wellness: fitness, nutrition,...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Some of the youngest stars ever seen have recently been found, thanks to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory. Herschel's observations were used in conjunction with contributing observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile -- a collaboration involving the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIFR) in Germany, the Onsala Space Observatory...
Former Men's Health and Best Life staffers to assist in magazine's redesign NEW YORK, March 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- American Media, Inc. announced today that Stephen Perrine, former Editor in Chief of Best Life and Publisher of Rodale Books, and design guru Joe Heroun, formerly of Men's Health, have joined former colleague David Zinczenko in his repositioning of Men's Fitness under American Media Chairman and CEO David Pecker. Perrine, who left parent company Rodale with Zinczenko,...
Six-Part Cultural Programming Event Premieres April 14-16, 2013 on the National Geographic Channel WASHINGTON, March 11, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following last night's much-buzzed-about kick-off party at South by Southwest (SXSW) for the upcoming miniseries event The '80s: The Decade That Made Us, the National Geographic Channel announced today that Emmy-nominated actor Rob Lowe will narrate the six-part cultural programming event that offers an unprecedented look at the...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Using data obtained from a NASA satellite, a Pennsylvania State University astronomer has identified the closest solar system to be found within the past 97 years. According to astronomer Kevin Luhman’s report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the newly identified system is a pair of brown dwarf stars and the third-closest system to the Sun. “The distance to this brown dwarf pair is 6.5 light years -- so close that Earth's...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The ink is drying on a brand new birth certificate for a star that's been around for a very long time. New calculations using NASA'S Hubble Space Telescope have enabled a group of astronomers to take an important step closer to reconciling the age of this star, and the age of the Universe. "We have found that this is the oldest known star with a well-determined age," said Howard Bond of Pennsylvania State University in University...
Latest Star Reference Libraries
The prominent feature that allows for the existence of life on Earth is the Sun. Radiation from our closest star provides heat and energy to our planet, driving biological processes and providing the necessary conditions for liquid water to naturally exist. But our Sun is only but one star in this vast Universe. And as it turns out, most stars are quite different than the one that illuminates our day. For this reason, scientists have, for hundreds of years, attempted to study the other...
UV Astronomy -- UV astronomy is the branch of astronomy and astrophysics which deals with objects visible in ultraviolet (UV) radiation. UV radiation ranges approximatively from 10nm (extreme UV) to 380nm (near UV). Ultraviolet line spectrum measurements are used to discern the chemical composition, densities, and temperatures of interstellar medium, and the temperature and composition of hot young stars. UV observations can also provide essential information about the evolution of...
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram -- In stellar astronomy, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (H-R diagram) shows the relation between the absolute magnitude and the spectral types of stars. It was invented around 1910 by Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell. There are two equivalent forms. One is the observer's form which plots the color of the star on one axis and the absolute magnitude on the other axis. The theoretician's form plots the temperature of the star on one axis and the...
X-ray Burster -- X-ray bursters are a class of binary stars which are luminous in X-rays. They contain a neutron star and a low-mass companion star. The companion fills its Roche lobe and therefore the neutron star is accreting matter from it. The inflowing gas forms an accretion disk around the neutron star. Sometimes X-ray bursters show a sudden increase in their X-ray luminosity, called X-ray burst. All properties of the X-ray bursts can be explained assuming that they result from...
Variable Star -- Most stars are of nearly constant luminosity. Our own Sun is a good example which goes through practically no measurable variation in brightness. There are, however, stars which do vary in brightness, called variable stars. They fall into two main groups: Intrinsic variables These are stars which have intrinsic variations in brightness, that is the star itself gets brighter and dimmer. There are many types of intrinsic variables, the main types being: --...
