ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Astronomers identify a new class of stellar system. They're not quite galaxies and only exist in isolation.

Extreme supergiant stars known as hypergiants are very rare, with only a few known to exist in the Milky Way. By tracing molecular emissions in the outflows around the red hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris, astronomers obtained the first detailed map of the star's envelope, which sheds light on the mechanisms involved in the final stages of extreme supergiant star.

A new study of an old meteorite contradicts current thinking about how rocky planets like the Earth and Mars acquire volatile elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and noble gases as they form.

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will study wispy streams of stars that extend far beyond the apparent edges of many galaxies. Missions like the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes would have to patch together hundreds of small images to see these structures around nearby galaxies in full. Roman will do so in a single snapshot. Astronomers will use these observations to explore how galaxies grow and the nature of dark matter.