Recent Comments

    ALMA tagged posts

    3I/ATLAS contains 30 times more semi-heavy water than comets in our solar system

    April 24, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist’s impression compares the semi-heavy water content of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS (left) and Earth (right). Insets illustrate the relative abundance of deuterated water (HDO) molecules, showing that 3I/ATLAS contains over 30 times more HDO than is found in Earth’s oceans. This elevated ratio suggests the comet formed in an extremely cold environment, very different from the conditions that shaped our Solar System.
    Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/M.Weiss

    New observations of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS include the first measurement of the abundance of deuterated water relative to ordinary water in an interstellar object...

    Read More

    ALMA and JWST investigate giant disk galaxy’s formation and evolution

    April 19, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers investigate the formation and evolution of a giant disc galaxy
    ALMA and JWST imaging of ADF22.1. Credit: arXiv (2026). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2604.07440

    European astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a recently discovered giant disk galaxy known as ADF22.1. Results of the new observations, published April 8 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the formation and evolution of this galaxy.

    A unique laboratory
    ADF22.1, also known as ADF22.A1, is a giant disk barred spiral galaxy residing in a protocluster known as SSA22 at a redshift of 3.09. It has an effective radius of some 22,800 light years and a stellar mass of about 100 billion solar masses...

    Read More

    Protostars ‘sneeze’ and produce rings of gas and magnetic flux as they grow

    April 4, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Star light, star bright, baby stars blow rings alight
    An artist’s rendering of the molecular cloud core of MC 27 based on observations from the ALMA telescope. The protostar and the disk surrounding it are shown in the lower right, with warm gas extending outward in a ring-like structure, with magnetic field lines penetrating the interior of the ring. Credit:The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2026). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ae47ec

    Researchers have uncovered new insights into the early development of baby stars...

    Read More

    Astronomers may have just found one of the missing links in galaxy evolution

    February 18, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An international team of astronomers led by UMass Amherst may have just found one of the missing links in galaxy evolution
    Eighteen of the recently discovered dusty, star-forming galaxies (in red) formed almost 13 billion years ago. Credit: UMass Amherst

    A team of 48 astronomers from 14 countries, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has discovered a population of dusty, star-forming galaxies at the far edges of the universe that formed only a billion years after the Big Bang, believed to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago. The galaxies may represent a snapshot in the galactic life cycle, linking recently discovered ultradistant bright galaxies formed 13.3 billion years ago with early “quiescent” (dead) galaxies that stopped forming stars about two billion years after the Big Bang.

    Challenging what we know about cosmos
    The new discovery challenges current models of the universe, making the f...

    Read More