Besides being a point of light, a star is a luminous, spherical mass of plasma, enough to hold itself together under its own gravity. On its own, though, gravitational rounding isn't enough. What ...

Stars form in massive clouds of gas called molecular clouds. As they form, they accrete gas from these clouds, and as the ...

Luke Keller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Researchers have found that stars in the early universe may have formed from 'fluffy' molecular clouds. Using the ALMA telescope to observe the Small Magellanic Cloud -- whose environment is similar ...

While our Sun prefers to go solo, many other stars are parts of binary systems, with a pair of stars gravitationally bound to each other. In some cases, the stars are far enough apart that planets can ...

Simulation studies indicate water formation within the first 200 million years of the universe, primarily through supernovae from the first generation of stars. Pair-instability supernovae, occurring ...

Astronomers have identified a rare type of binary star system containing a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar and a helium star companion, formed via common envelope evolution. Although such systems ...

For decades, astronomers have wondered what the very first stars in the universe were like. These stars formed new chemical elements, which enriched the universe and allowed the next generations of ...

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. For decades, astronomers have wondered what the very ...