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04 – ALMA Top 10 – PHANGS: A New Survey Unravels the Relationship between Star-forming Clouds and their Host Galaxies.

Galaxies come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Some of the most significant differences among galaxies, however, relate to where and how they form new stars. Compelling research to explain these differences has been elusive, but that is about to change.

A vast, new research project with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), known as PHANGS-ALMA (Physics at High Angular Resolution in Nearby GalaxieS), delves into this question with far greater power and precision than ever before by measuring the demographics and characteristics of a staggering 100,000 individual stellar nurseries spread throughout 74 galaxies.

05 – ALMA Top 10: Cosmic Pretzel

Astronomers using ALMA Observatory have obtained a high-resolution image showing two disks in which young stars are growing, fed by a complex pretzel-shaped network of filaments of gas and dust. Observing this remarkable phenomenon sheds new light on the earliest phases of the lives of stars and helps astronomers determine the conditions in which binary stars are born.

06 – ALMA Top 10: Watching Planet Formation in Action

For the first time, astronomers using ALMA have witnessed 3D motions of gas in a planet-forming disk. At three locations in the disk around a young star called HD 163296, gas is flowing like a waterfall into gaps that are most likely caused by planets in formation. These gas flows have long been predicted and would directly influence the chemical composition of planetary atmospheres.

07 – ALMA Top 10: The Sharpest View of Young Stars and Planetary Systems

Astronomers have cataloged nearly 4,000 exoplanets in orbit around distant stars. Though the discovery of these newfound worlds has taught us much, there is still a great deal we do not know about the birth of planets and the precise cosmic recipes that spawn the wide array of planetary bodies we have already uncovered, including so-called hot Jupiters, massive rocky worlds, icy dwarf planets, and – hopefully someday soon – distant analogs of Earth.

To help answer these and other intriguing questions, a team of astronomers has conducted ALMA‘s first large-scale, high-resolution survey of protoplanetary disks the belts of dust and gas around young stars, known as the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP).

08 – ALMA Top 10: A Quintillion Tons of Table Salt is Found Orbiting a Young Star

New ALMA Observatory observations show there is ordinary table salt in a not-so-ordinary location: 1,500 light-years from Earth in the disk surrounding a massive young star. Though salts have been found in the atmospheres of old, dying stars, this is the first time they have been seen around young stars in stellar nurseries. The detection of this salt-encrusted disk may help astronomers study the chemistry of star formation as well as identify other similar protostars hidden inside dense cocoons of dust and gas.