December 16, 2013 SMA Reveals Giant Star Cluster in the Making News Release W49A might be one of the best-kept secrets in our galaxy. This star-forming region shines 100 times brighter than the Orion nebula, but is so obscured by dust that very little visible or infrared light escapes.

December 11, 2013 Swarms of Pluto-Size Objects Kick Up Dust around Adolescent Sun-Like Stars News Release "The dust in HD 107146 reveals this very interesting feature -- it gets thicker in the very distant outer reaches of the star's disk," said Luca Ricci, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), and lead author on a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. At the time of the observations, Ricci was with the California Institute of Technology.

July 18, 2013 Snow Falling around Infant Solar System News Release The sight of a snowfall can thrill children, but the first-ever snow line seen around a distant star gives astronomers an even greater thrill because of what it reveals about the formation of planets and our solar system's history.

July 4, 2013 Planets and the Snow Line Science Update As a new star develops within a molecular cloud, a circumstellar disk forms naturally from the rotating gas and dust.

May 30, 2013 A Burst of Stars 13 Billion Years Ago Science Update The universe immediately following the big bang contained mostly hydrogen and some helium.

May 23, 2013 Astronomers spot 'missing link' collision creating a supermassive galaxy ten times the size of the Milky Way News Release: www.dailymail.co.uk "Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, astronomers have discovered."

May 22, 2013 The rapid assembly of an elliptical galaxy of 400 billon solar masses at a redshift of 2.3 News Release: www.nature.com "Stellar archaeology shows that massive elliptical galaxies formed rapidly about ten billon years ago with star-formation rates of above several hundred solar masses per year."

April 25, 2013 Dense Cloud Breaks Rules of Star Formation News Release: www.livescience.com "Researchers are discovering new information about a dark bean-shaped cloud in the center of our galaxy."

April 08, 2013 Old Star Wears Sunblock News Release: news.discovery.com "The Universe is a vast and wondrous place. So it shouldn't be surprising that you'll find all kinds of substances in all kinds of places, even the main ingredient in sunblock around a very old star."

March 7, 2013 A New Telescope Probes a Young Protostar Science Update In the past decade, it has become possible to study such extremely early stages of star formation thanks to submillimeter and infrared telescopes that can peer through the heavy obscuration of dust in the birth clouds. For the first time, astronomers have been able to address some of the key physical processes underway in these early stages of stellar gestation.

February 14, 2013 Hydrogen Masers in Space Science Update Regions of active star formation generate some of the most spectacular such masers -- in one case the maser radiates as much energy in a single "color" (that is, a single spectral feature) as does our Sun in its entire visible spectrum.

January 10, 2013 A Cloudy Mystery News Release: www.caltech.edu "Near the crowded galactic center, where billowing clouds of gas and dust cloak a supermassive black hole three million times as massive as the sun- a black hole whose gravity is strong enough to grip stars that are whipping around it at thousands of kilometers per second - one particular cloud has baffled astronomers."