V883 Orionis tagged posts

Scientists studying a nearby protostar have detected the presence of water in its circumstellar disk. The new observations made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) mark the first detection of water being inherited into a protoplanetary disk without significant changes to its composition. These results further suggest that the water in our Solar System formed billions of years before the Sun. The new observations are published today in Nature.

V883 Orionis is a protostar located roughly 1,305 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion...

This artist’s impression of the water snowline around the young star V883 Orionis, as detected with ALMA. Credit: A. Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

A violent outburst by the young star V883 Orionis has given astronomers their first view of a water “snowline” in a protoplanetary disk – the transition point around the star where the temperature and pressure are low enough for water ice to form. An abrupt increase in the brightness of the star “flash heated” the inner portion of the disk, pushing the water snowline out much farther than normal, enabling astronomers to image it with ALMA. Under normal conditions, the water snowline would be much too close to the protostar to observe directly, even with ALMA’s remarkable resolution.

Typically, heat from a young Sun-like star preve...