ESO telescope reveals hidden views of vast stellar nurseries webwire.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from webwire.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Using ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), astronomers have created a vast infrared atlas of five nearby stellar nurseries by piecing together more than one million images. These large mosaics reveal young stars in the making, embedded in thick clouds of dust. Thanks to these observations, astronomers have a unique tool with which to decipher the complex puzzle of stellar birth.
Center for Astrophysics
A Hubble image of the M-dwarf star Proxima Centauri, our closest stellar neighbor about four light-years away. Proxima hosts two planets, and is known to actively flare. Astronomers studying the suitability for life evolving on exoplanets around M-dwarf stars have completed a multi-wavelength analysis of an extreme flare on Proxima Cen.
Hubble/ ESA/NAS
The prospects for life around low-mass, cool M-type stars have been extensively discussed because these stars are the most common ones in the galaxy, and they frequently host Earth-sized planets in their habitable zones (orbits where the surface temperatures can support liquid water). Unfortunately for the prospects of life, however, these stars also exhibit higher levels of stellar activity and flaring than do more massive, solar-type stars, and flares can gradually deplete a planet’s atmosphere of molecules needed for life. Moreover, these hostile conditions persist in some fashion throughout their lifeti