Tag: stars

Witnessing the Birth of Planets

Posted on by U-M Space Institute
planets
University of Michigan researchers contributed to an international collaboration that’s providing an unparalleled view into how planets are born using the JWST—the most powerful space telescope ever launched. In particular, the team studied PDS 70, a young star with two growing planets in its orbit. Located 370 lightyears away, this system gives scientists a rare chance to see how planets form and evolve during their earliest stages of development.

In Six New Rogue Worlds, Webb Telescope Finds More Star Birth Clues

Posted on by U-M Space Institute
stars
An international collaboration that included the University of Michigan has spotted six likely rogue worlds—objects with planetlike masses but untethered from any star’s gravity—using the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. The discovery includes the lightest rogue planet candidate ever identified with a dusty disk around it. The elusive objects offer new evidence that the same cosmic processes that give birth to stars may also play a common role in making objects only slightly bigger than Jupiter.

U-M Part of Consortium to Design, Construct Powerful New Instrument to Unlock Universe’s Secrets

Posted on by U-M Space Institute
ANDES
The University of Michigan Department of Astronomy is part of an international consortium of institutions that will take part in the design and construction of ANDES, a powerful instrument set to be used on the largest visible-infrared telescope in the world. The instrument will reveal the nature of atmospheres of planets around nearby stars, rare elements forged in the interiors of stars, the formation of galaxies and even the evolution of the universe itself, according to University of Michigan astronomer Michael Meyer.