ALMA tagged posts

Planets form in Organic Soups with Different Ingredients

M.Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

A series of new images reveals that planets form in organic soups – and no two soups are alike. Astronomers have mapped out the chemicals inside of planetary nurseries in extraordinary detail. The newly unveiled maps reveal the locations of dozens of molecules within five protoplanetary disks – regions of dust and gas where planets form around young stars.

“These planet-forming disks are teeming with organic molecules, some which are implicated in the origins of life here on Earth,” explains Karin Öberg, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) who led the map-making project...

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Spotted: An Exoplanet with the Potential to Form Moons

Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have helped detect the clear presence of a moon-forming region around an exoplanet — a planet outside of our Solar System. The new observations, published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, may shed light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.

The detected region is known as a circumplanetary disk, a ring-shaped area surrounding a planet where moons and other satellites may form. The observed disk surrounds exoplanet PDS 70c, one of two giant, Jupiter-like planets orbiting a star nearly 400 light-years away...

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Galactic Fireworks: New ESO images reveal stunning features of Nearby Galaxies

A team of astronomers has released new observations of nearby galaxies that resemble colourful cosmic fireworks. The images, obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), show different components of the galaxies in distinct colours, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the locations of young stars and the gas they warm up around them. By combining these new observations with data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, the team is helping shed new light on what triggers gas to form stars.

A team of astronomers has released new observations of nearby galaxies that resemble colourful cosmic fireworks...

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New Radio Receiver opens Wider Window to Radio Universe

Distribution of CO isotopologues in the Orion molecular cloud observed simultaneously with the newly developed broadband receiver. (Credit: Osaka Prefecture University/NAOJ)

Researchers have used the latest wireless technology to develop a new radio receiver for astronomy. The receiver is capable of capturing radio waves at frequencies over a range several times wider than conventional ones, and can detect radio waves emitted by many types of molecules in space at once. This is expected to enable significant progresses in the study of the evolution of the Universe and the mechanisms of star and planet formation.

Interstellar molecular clouds of gas and dust provide the material for stars and planets...

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