Poster – Page 2 – National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Planetary rings of Uranus Poster

Using both ALMA and the VLT, astronomers have imaged the cold, rock-strewn rings encircling the planet Uranus. Rather than observing the reflected sunlight from these rings, ALMA and the VLT imaged the millimeter and mid-infrared “glow” naturally emitted by the frigidly cold particles of the rings themselves.

HL Tau – ALMA Reveals the Birth of Planets Poster

Demonstrating the power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, this image reveals a spectacular planet-forming disk of dust and gas around the young Sun-like star HL Tauri, located 450 light-years from Earth. The superposed ellipses indicate, for comparison, the orbits of the planets in our Solar System.

Downloadable poster of an earlier ALMA observation of Europa

Europa, The Water Moon of Jupiter Poster

Downloadable poster of an ALMA observation of Europa. This intriguing image of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, was acquired with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a state-of-the-art, radio-wavelength telescope array operated by an international partnership in the high elevation Chilean Andes. The highlighted region (white circle) is associated with a thermal anomaly and a potential water plume detected by both the Hubble Space Telescope and the unmanned Galileo spacecraft that studied Jupiter and its environment for eight years (1995-2003). The deep ocean that lies beneath Europa’s icy surface is perhaps the most promising place to search for present-day environments suitable for life.

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