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    ALMA dives into Black Hole’s ‘Sphere of Influence’

    August 15, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Telescope (NASA/ESA); Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey

    ALMA has made the most precise measurements of cold gas swirling around a supermassive black hole – the cosmic behemoth at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 3258. What happens inside a black hole stays inside a black hole, but what happens inside a black hole’s “sphere of influence” – the innermost region of a galaxy where a black hole’s gravity is the dominant force – is of intense interest to astronomers and can help determine the mass of a black hole as well as its impact on its galactic neighborhood.

    Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) provide an unprecedented close-up view of a swirling disk of cold interstellar gas rotating around a supermassive black hole...

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    Cool, Nebulous Ring around Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

    June 7, 2019, Categories  Uncategorized

    ALMA image of the disk of cool hydrogen gas flowing around the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. The colors represent the motion of the gas relative to Earth: the red portion is moving away, so the radio waves detected by ALMA are slightly stretched, or shifted, to the ‘redder’ portion of the spectrum; the blue color represents gas moving toward Earth, so the radio waves are slightly scrunched, or shifted, to the ‘bluer’ portion of the spectrum. Crosshairs indicate location of black hole.
    Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), E.M. Murchikova; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

    New ALMA observations reveal a never-before-seen disk of cool, interstellar gas wrapped around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way...

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    Liberal Sprinkling of Salt discovered around a Young Star

    February 10, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    Artist impression of Orion Source I, a young, massive star about 1,500 light-years away. New ALMA observations detected a ring of salt — sodium chloride, ordinary table salt — surrounding the star. This is the first detection of salts of any kind associated with a young star. The blue region (about 1/3 the way out from the center of the disk) represents the region where ALMA detected the millimeter-wavelength “glow” from the salts.
    Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; S. Dagnello

    A team of astronomers and chemists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has detected the chemical fingerprints of sodium chloride (NaCl) and other similar salty compounds emanating from the dusty disk surrounding Orion Source I, a massive, young star in a dusty cloud behind the Orion Nebula.

    “It’...

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    Retreating Snow Line reveals Organic Molecules around Young Star

    February 5, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The distribution of dust is shown in orange and the distribution of methanol, an organic molecule, is shown in blue.
    Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Lee et al. V883Ori

    Astronomers using ALMA have detected various complex organic molecules around the young star V883 Ori. A sudden outburst from this star is releasing molecules from the icy compounds in the planet forming disk. The chemical composition of the disk is similar to that of comets in the modern Solar System. Sensitive ALMA observations enable astronomers to reconstruct the evolution of organic molecules from the birth of the Solar System to the objects we see today.

    The research team led by Jeong-Eun Lee (Kyung Hee University, Korea) used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to detect complex organic molec...

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