ALMA tagged posts

Furthest Ever Detection of a Galaxy’s Magnetic Field

Located centrally on a dark background is an electric blue donut-shaped blob, showing the orientation of the magnetic field of the distant galaxy. The bright donut is not complete, and there are only two main features. The lines of the magnetic field give it an almost furry texture. The right-hand side of the donut forms a bright, curved banana-like shape. Instead, on the left-hand side, there is another bright region, circular in shape.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected the magnetic field of a galaxy so far away that its light has taken more than 11 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The result provides astronomers with vital clues about how the magnetic fields of galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected the magnetic field of a galaxy so far away that its light has taken more than 11 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The result provides astronomers with vital clues about how the magnetic fields of galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be.

Lots of...

Read More

Astronomers Discover a Forming Quadruple-Star System

G206.93-16.61E2 is close to the reflection nebula NGC 2023 in the Orion B molecular cloud. The Zoom-in pictures show the 1.3mm continuum emission (blue) and CO molecular outflow (orange) of ALMA observation. These observations develop an in-depth understanding of the formation of multiple star systems in the early stage.
 (Image by SHAO)
 

Recently, the international team ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP) led by Prof. Liu Tie from Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a high-resolution investigation on 72 dense cores in the Orion Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and discovered a forming quadruple-star system within one core...

Read More

Gas Streamers Feed Triple Baby Stars

Gas distribution around the trinary protostars IRAS 04239+2436, (left) ALMA observations of SO emissions, and (right) as reproduced by the numerical simulation on the supercomputer ATERUI. In the left panel, protostars A and B, shown in blue, indicate the radio waves from the dust around the protostars. Within protostar A, two unresolved protostars are thought to exist. In the right panel, the locations of the three protostars are shown by the blue crosses. (Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J.-E. Lee et al.) 

New observations and simulations of three spiral arms of gas feeding material to three protostars forming in a trinary system have clarified the formation of multi-star systems.

Most stars with a mass similar to the Sun form in multi-star systems together with other stars...

Read More

ALMA digs deeper into the Mystery of Planet Formation

Images of disks around 19 protostars, including 4 binary systems observed with ALMA. For 1 binary system, disks around the primary and secondary are presented independently (2nd line rightmost and 3rd line leftmost). Disks are presented in the order of their evolutionary sequence (the one in the upper-left corner is the youngest while the one at the lower-right corner is the oldest). The two oldest disks show faint ring-gap structures. A scale bar of 20 au (roughly the distance between the Sun and Uranus) is shown for each disk image. (Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), N. Ohashi et al.) Original size (1.0MB)

An international research team used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe disks around 19 protostars with a very high resolution to search for the earliest...

Read More