ALMA tagged posts

ALMA reveals Inner Web of Stellar Nursery

This spectacular and unusual image shows part of the famous Orion Nebula, a star formation region lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. It combines a mosaic of millimetre wavelength images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the IRAM 30-metre telescope, shown in red, with a more familiar infrared view from the HAWK-I instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, shown in blue. The group of bright blue-white stars at the left is the Trapezium Cluster -- made up of hot young stars that are only a few million years old. Credit: ESO/H. Drass/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/A. Hacar

This spectacular and unusual image shows part of the famous Orion Nebula, a star formation region lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. It combines a mosaic of millimetre wavelength images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the IRAM 30-metre telescope, shown in red, with a more familiar infrared view from the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shown in blue. The group of bright blue-white stars at the left is the Trapezium Cluster — made up of hot young stars that are only a few million years old. Credit: ESO/H. Drass/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/A. Hacar

New data from the ALMA and other telescopes have been used to create this stunning image showing a web of filaments in the Orion Nebula...

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Proxima Centauri’s no good, very bad day

An artist’s impression of a flare from Proxima Centauri, modeled after the loops of glowing hot gas seen in the largest solar flares. An artist’s impression of the exoplanet Proxima b is shown in the foreground. Proxima b orbits its star 20 times closer than the Earth orbits the Sun. A flare 10 times larger than a major solar flare would blast Proxima b with 4,000 times more radiation than the Earth gets from our Sun’s flares. Credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa / Carnegie Institution for Science, NASA/SDO, NASA/JPL.

An artist’s impression of a flare from Proxima Centauri, modeled after the loops of glowing hot gas seen in the largest solar flares. An artist’s impression of the exoplanet Proxima b is shown in the foreground. Proxima b orbits its star 20 times closer than the Earth orbits the Sun. A flare 10 times larger than a major solar flare would blast Proxima b with 4,000 times more radiation than the Earth gets from our Sun’s flares. Credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa / Carnegie Institution for Science, NASA/SDO, NASA/JPL.

Flare illuminates lack of a dust ring; puts habitability of Proxima b in question. Astronomers have detected a massive stellar flare – an energetic explosion of radiation – from the closest star to our own Sun, Proxima Centauri, which occurred last March...

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Stellar Embryos in nearby Dwarf Galaxy contain surprisingly Complex Organic Molecules

Astronomers using ALMA have uncovered chemical 'fingerprints' of methanol, dimethyl ether, and methyl formate in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The latter two molecules are the largest organic molecules ever conclusively detected outside the Milky Way. The far-infrared image on the left shows the full galaxy. The zoom-in image shows the star-forming region observed by ALMA. It is a combination of mid-infrared data from Spitzer and visible (H-alpha) data from the Blanco 4-meter telescope. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); Herschel/ESA; NASA/JPL-Caltech; NOAO

Astronomers using ALMA have uncovered chemical ‘fingerprints’ of methanol, dimethyl ether, and methyl formate in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The latter two molecules are the largest organic molecules ever conclusively detected outside the Milky Way. The far-infrared image on the left shows the full galaxy. The zoom-in image shows the star-forming region observed by ALMA. It is a combination of mid-infrared data from Spitzer and visible (H-alpha) data from the Blanco 4-meter telescope. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); Herschel/ESA; NASA/JPL-Caltech; NOAO

The nearby dwarf galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a chemically primitive place...

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The Structure of an Active Galactic Nucleus

The structure of an active galactic nucleus

A Hubble image of the superluminous merging galaxy Arp220. Astronomers have measured structures only a hundreds of light-years in size around the two supermassive black holes in the nuclear region, as well as evidece for an outflow. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University

The nuclei of most galaxies host supermassive black holes containing millions to billions of solar-masses of material. The immediate environments of these black holes typically include a tori of dust and gas and, as material falls toward the black hole, the gas radiates copiously at all wavelengths...

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