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Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Huge Hot Stars Create Planetary "Danger Zones"


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Every rose has its thorns: Spherical drawings highlight planetary "danger zones" scattered across the Rosette Nebula—a stellar nursery about 5,200 light-years from Earth—in an infrared image (top).

Smaller, relatively cool stars in these zones are at risk of having their planet-forming materials stripped away by extreme solar winds and radiation from much hotter stars nearby, as seen in an artist's illustration (bottom).

Rosette Nebula image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Z. Balog (Univ. of Ariz./Univ. of Szeged); illustration courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)