Space Shuttle on a Cart,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyvy9E0rRVI&feature=related

Interesting video of the space shuttle being carted around. It looks like they hold some media conference in the middle of it. I wonder what the support is actually made of. It looks just like a little dolley for moving furniture.

http://www.naoj.org/Pressrelease/2011/02/17/index.html
http://www.naoj.org/Pressrelease/2011/02/17/supplement.html

This tells about the Subaru Telescope, lead by the National Astronomy Observatory of Japan. I did not know Japan did much astronomy research, but then there is no reason for them not to. The NAOJ released significant findings from the Subaru Telescope. They have very sharp images of protoplanetary disks around young stars. According to the website, these represent the most detailed image of protoplanetary disks ever seen. These protoplanetary disks are made up of dust and gas, and eventually coalesce into planets.
Stars first form from the collapse of material in molecular clouds due to the gravity of a dense region in the cloud. When the material collapses inward, it heats up. The material from the planets is made from the same cloud material that went to form the star. Molecular cloud molecules fall in to the protostar, or newborn star, and form together in a disk around the star. The article does not explain why it forms in this disk rather than falling into the star.
The molecules pulled by gravity into the disk heat up as they fall inward, releasing light at infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths. A star in this stage is less then 100,000 years old.
When a star reaches an age of 1,000,000 years, most of the material surrounding it has been swept away by stellar winds and other occurences. Only a dense disk of material surrounds a star at this stage. In this stage of its life, a star is called a T Tauri Star. A star has officially "grown up" at an age of about 100 million years, when it is primarily kept stable from nuclear fusion in its core. By this time, almost all of the surrounding disk has disappeared, leaving mostly planets and larger particles. Collisions of comets or meteors at this time could lead to the formation of belts of dust in solar systems, such as the asteroid belt, or dust around the star Beta Pictoris--> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Pictoris