Topic
Physical evolution of molecular clouds into protostars, tracked through temperature and density changes.
ALMA's COMPASS survey found methanol masers around more than half of the 11 infant sun-like stars it studied. The survey puts organic chemistry around stars that are still forming, though its first papers do not trace any of it into a planet.
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ESA says Webb's infrared image of NGC 7129 shows a 3.5-light-year cavity carved by outflows from one young star of 5 to 8 solar masses. The link between that star and the cavity rests on ESA's reading of a single snapshot.
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Webb spectra identified nine new brown dwarfs in the IC 348 nursery, the faintest estimated at about two Jupiter masses, a record low for the class. It is still open whether brown dwarf formation stops there or this survey simply could not see any fainter.
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A RIKEN group simulated water ice chemistry at 10 kelvin and found that a single property of a metal-poor birth cloud can produce both of the strange isotope ratios measured in interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.
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NASA's daily astronomy page told readers, in one sentence at the foot of an image explanation, that its main site is changing address. The change has no announced date, so anyone maintaining links is working without a deadline.
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Two years after the same team stopped at three to four Jupiter masses in this cloud, deeper Webb imaging and spectroscopy reached 0.19 percent of a solar mass, below where models of cloud collapse sit comfortably.
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Rodrigo Silva's team at Coimbra counted 43% of the S-cluster stars as binaries, then ran 100,000 simulated pairs through the black hole's tides for a million years and finished at 38%, close enough to argue the stars were born where they orbit.
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Higher-resolution mapping turns star-forming clouds into comparisons rather than catalogues, but first someone has to check that the finer maps agree with the ones built over previous decades.
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