Are heavyweight stars born like our Sun?

January 28, 2010 - Astronomy
Explaining how the most massive stars are born, deep within their stellar nurseries, is one of the most persistent mysteries in modern astronomy. Now, observations at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii provide convincing new evidence that these stellar heavyweights may be born in much the same manner as lightweights like our Sun.
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Alien dust found around distant star

January 7th, 2010 - Astronomy
Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers at UCLA have found dusty evidence for the formation of young, rocky planets around a star some 500 light-years distant. But these potential extrasolar worlds are alien in an even more intriguing way: In the aftermath of collisions between planetary embryos around this star, the researchers discovered that the dusty debris bears no resemblance to the planetary building blocks of our own solar system.
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Parting Eta Carinae's clouds reveals more clouds

January 4th, 2010 - ScienceNews
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John Martin of the University of Illinois at Springfield reported new observations of Eta Carinae January 4 at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Astronomers took the new images using the Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager, or NICI, at the Gemini South telescope in Chile. NICI, which was designed to find planets around other stars, uses a system called adaptive optics to cancel out blurring from the Earth’s atmosphere...
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Mysterious Alien Dust Hints at Violent Planet Formation

January 13, 2010 - Universe Today
Five-hundred light years away, worlds are colliding, and they're made of nothing we've ever seen.
Last week at the 215th American Astronomical Society meeting, UCLA astronomers announced that they had found warm dust – evidence for the violent collision of rocky planets – around a star called HD 131488. The strange thing is, the composition of the dust has little in common with the composition of rocky bodies in any other known system.
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Alien dust kicked up by baby planet collisions

January 12, 2010 - MSNBC
In the search for other planetary systems like Earth that are capable of hosting extraterrestrial life, scientists have come across some very alien systems indeed. But the latest ones have researchers truly perplexed.
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Infrared imaging and spectroscopic measurements of the system, performed by the Gemini South Telescope in Chile, showed the unusual chemical composition.
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Revealing the Explosive Heart of Eta Carinae

January 6, 2010 - U.S. News & World Report
Using adaptive optics to remove atmospheric blurring, Gemini Observatory released an image today showing previously hidden forensic secrets at the ballistic core of the Homunculus Nebula, part of the explosive Eta Carinae star system.
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Probing the Explosive History of Eta Car

January 4, 2010 - Universe Today
I can't seem to stop writing about Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) stars this week. And new research discussed at the AAS conference this week continues the trend. As part of a series of short talks on exploding stars, John Martin of the University of Illinois, Springfield spoke on his work with the LBV Eta Carinae.
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To probe the internal structure of the outburst Martin and his team used the Near Infrared Chronographic Imager (NICI) on the Gemini South telescope in Chile. The use of infrared allowed the team to peer through the dusty outer layers of the nebula which absorb visible light. The device also used a device to block the light from the central star allowing the team to look through the glare and more directly explore the surrounding structure.
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Parting Eta Carinae's clouds reveals more clouds

January 4, 2010 - ScienceNews
A new view of Eta Carinae, a nearby star system that is expected to explode as a supernova sometime in the next 10,000 years or so, reveals for the first time clouds of gas that were expelled by one of its stars.
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John Martin of the University of Illinois at Springfield reported new observations of Eta Carinae January 4 at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Astronomers took the new images using the Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager, or NICI, at the Gemini South telescope in Chile. NICI, which was designed to find planets around other stars, uses a system called adaptive optics to cancel out blurring from the Earth’s atmosphere. This feature allowed Martin and his team to create the first visual images of the inner cloud, called the Little Homunculus Nebula. It shows up as a faint brightening around the central star.
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