Transit Method When a planet passes directly between a star and its observer, it dims the star’s light by…
SuperKnova is a project to provide learning opportunities in radio technology for students in a way that is inclusive…
Three million years ago the fault regions of the Sierra Nevada and White Mountains began their thunderous rise. Their…
University of the West Indies student Brianna Sampson finds than more than a thousand Giant Radio Galaxies could be hidden in the data of a radio sky survey.
University of the West Indies student Kavita Gosine Bissessar hunts for asymmetrical DRAGNs in the VLA Sky Survey.
University of Arizona student Swapnaneel Dey looks at the metallicity of interstellar clouds in our galaxy.
When a distant quasar was found to have two sources, University of Washington student Anaïs Martin wanted to find out why.
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Molecules in the disc around the star IRS 48
These images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) show where various gas molecules were found in the disc around the IRS 48 star, also known as Oph-IRS 48. The disc contains a cashew-nut-shaped region in its southern part, which traps millimetre-sized dust grains that can come together and grow into kilometre-sized objects like comets, asteroids and potentially even planets. Recent observations spotted several complex organic molecules in this region, including formaldehyde (H2CO; orange), methanol (CH3OH; green) and dimethyl ether (CH3OCH3; blue), the last being the largest molecule found in a planet-forming disc to date. The emission signaling the presence of these molecules is clearly stronger in the disc’s dust trap, while carbon monoxide gas (CO; purple) is present in the entire gas disc. The location of the central star is marked with a star in all four images. The dust trap is about the same size as the area taken up by the methanol emission, shown on the bottom left.NRAO Making Waves
Announcements and Achievements
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National Radio Astronomy Observatory Shines at New Mexico Governor’s STEM Challenge
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) marked its presence for the third consecutive year at the prestigious New Mexico Governor’s STEM Challenge
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German Astronomers Share Proposed Science for the ngVLA
Over the course of two scientific meetings, held in 2022 and 2023, German astronomers have collected 41 highly compelling science cases involving 57 unique authors from 19 German institutions, all aspiring to use the ngVLA.
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NAC Student Researchers Receive Prestigious Chambliss Medals at AAS 243
Two student researchers from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s National Astronomy Consortium (NAC) program were each awarded the prestigious…
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ALMA Gets a New Heartbeat
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has just received a “heart transplant,” high in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. ALMA, the most complex astronomical observatory ever built on Earth, installed a new hydrogen maser. Funded by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), this upgrade marks an essential investment, setting a new standard in reliability for observations.
On a clear, dark night, you can see a glowing stream that seems to split the sky. We have called it the Milky Way for thousands of years, and its exact nature was a mystery until less than a hundred years ago.