Articles
Star Formation
Ansdell, M. “Revising the Story of Planetary Formation.” Sky & Telescope (May 2020): 34. Modern theories on how a planetary system forms around a star.
Cendes, Y. “The Sun’s Lost Siblings.” Astronomy (July 2020): 44. Trying to identify the stars that formed from the same nebula as the Sun.
Croswell, K. “The Story of T Tauri.” Sky & Telescope (February 2021): 12. On the star that helped us understand ongoing star formation.
Kaler, J. “How Stars are Born and Die.” Astronomy (July 2020): 16. Review of stellar evolution.
O’Dell, C. R. “Exploring the Orion Nebula.” Sky & Telescope (December 1994): 20. Good review with Hubble results.
Redd, N. “Is Eta Corvi a Window to our Past.” Astronomy (July 2020): 50. About a younger star with two rings of material around it.
Rimmer, A. “The Very Hungry Universe.” Astronomy (June 2022): 16. On the fundamental role of accretion in star formation.
Talcott, R. “Untangling the Tarantula Nebula.” Astronomy (September 2021): 24. Understanding and observing this massive star formation region.
Exoplanets
Barbuzano, J. “The Real Tatooines.” Sky & Telescope (July 2022): 34. On the discovery of planets that orbit one or both stars in a binary star system.
Carroll, M. “The Strange Case of the Eyeball Planets.” Astronomy (August 2022): 40. On tidally locked exoplanets orbiting close to their stars.
Colon, K. “Exoplanets Everywhere.” Sky & Telescope (May 2023): 34. On the work of the TESS mission finding transiting planets.
Dawson, R. “Toasty Jupiters: Star Huggers.” Sky & Telescope (October 2022): 28. Update on what we have learned about and from hot Jupiters.
Hall, S. “The Hunt for the First Exomoons.” Sky & Telescope (September 2020): 34. Nice overview.
May, B., et al. “Exoplanets: How We Discovered Other Worlds.” Astronomy (June 2022): 24. A concise history and explanation of techniques for finding exoplanets.
Morley, C. “The In-Betweeners.” Sky & Telescope (March 2022): 34. On objects that could be brown dwarfs or large exoplanets.
Seager, S. “Exoplanets Everywhere.” Sky & Telescope (August 2013): 18. An excellent discussion of some frequently asked questions about the nature and arrangement of planets out there.
Stuart, C. “The Planets that Aren’t What they Seem.” Sky & Telescope (February 2022): 20. On Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes—what they are like and how they formed.
Ricker, G. “Inside the Hunt for the Nearest Exoplanets.” Astronomy (August 2021): 14. On the TESS mission and its discoveries.
Websites
Star Formation
Center for Astrophysics star formation page: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/research/topic/star-formation.
Eagle Nebula at Many Wavelengths: Viewspace (the so-called “Pillars of Creation”): https://viewspace.org/interactives/unveiling_invisible_universe/star_formation/eagle_nebula.
Hubble Space Telescope page on star formation: https://esahubble.org/science/formation_of_stars/.
JWST Star Birth Page: https://webb.nasa.gov/content/science/birth.html.
Universe Today 2018 page on protoplanetary disks: https://www.universetoday.com/140890/here-are-20-protoplanetary-disks-with-newly-forming-planets-carving-out-gaps-in-the-gas-and-dust/.
Exoplanets
Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia: http://exoplanet.eu/. Maintained by Jean Schneider of the Paris Observatory; has the largest catalog of planet discoveries and useful background material (some of it more technical).
Kepler Mission page at NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html.
NASA Exoplanet Exploration Overview Site (with catalog and lots of information): https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/.
NASA Exoplanet Exploration Dashboard: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/discovery/discoveries-dashboard/. A handy place to find up-to-date information of exoplanet discoveries. This page is a summary of all discoveries by method and type. One click takes you to the full exoplanet catalog.
Planetary Society exoplanet pages: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/exoplanets.
TESS Mission page at MIT: https://tess.mit.edu/.
TESS Mission page at NASA: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/tess/.
Videos
Star Formation
A Star Is Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkktE_fs4NA. Discovery Channel video with astronomer Michelle Thaller (2:00).
Born in Beauty: Proplyds in the Orion Nebula: https://esahubble.org/videos/heic0917a/. 2009 short on Hubble Telescope observations of places where new star and planet systems can be seen forming (6:00).
Observations of HL Tau: https://public.nrao.edu/gallery/nrao-video-webcast-hl-tau/. Tony Beasley, the director of NRAO, describes the high-resolution observations of the young star HL Tau; with nice artist’s animation of a protoplanetary disk (1:00).
Tour of the Orion Nebula Region: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoeKQeJuHvw. 2011, narrated, Hubble fly-through from outside down to a proplyd (4:00).
Exoplanets
History of Exoplanet Discoveries Shown Graphically 1991–2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiFD_LBx2nM. An animation showing the location of exoplanets found each year, going from 0 to 4,003 (2:00).
Homes Away from Home: Revisiting the Seven Planets of TRAPPIST-1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2UdJDksdEQ. 2018 introduction of how we have observed and learned about this intriguing system of planets around a red dwarf (6:00).
Kepler Mission End-of-Flight Documentary: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/2187/kepler-end-of-flight-documentary/. Interviews in 2018 with mission scientists summarize Kepler’s work (5:00).
Kepler Mission Orrery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYLwoPTIQx4. A visualization of some of the early discoveries of the Kepler mission, showing the size and rotation period of exoplanet systems (0:20).
Nobel Winners Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz Talk About 51 Peg b Discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBvrn0Ki714U. How the first exoplanet was found; 2019 quick interview segments (2:00).
TESS Mission’s First Earth-sized World in Star’s Habitable Zone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU0qsIGS6MQ. 2020 news bulletin about the planet TOI 700b (3:00).
The Search for Earthlike Worlds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CF9RnwY3RE. 2017 interview with astronomer Natalie Batalha about the work of the Kepler space telescope finding exoplanets (3:00).
The Ultra-cool Dwarf and the Seven Planets: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1706a/. 2017 ESOCast on the discovery of the TRAPPIST 1 system with 7 exoplanets, with some in the habitable zone (4:00).