Using radio telescopes in the United States and Europe, astronomers have made the most detailed images ever of Hydrogen gas in a spiral galaxy other than the Milky Way.

Using a new observing capability of the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array radio telescope, astronomers have discovered a solar-system-sized disk of gas and dust feeding material onto a young star with 8 to 10 times the mass of the Sun.

Looking more than 12 billion years into the past, the scientists found that the young galaxy experiencing a burst of star formation was surrounded by enough cold molecular gas to make 100 billion suns.

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array of radio telescopes have discovered a cloud of gas apparently being struck by a jet of ultrafast particles powered by the energy of a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy 450 million light-years away.

At a ceremony last Friday, August 25 in which the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope was formally dedicated, U.S. Senator Robert C Byrd announced that the gigantic telescope had successfully opened its two-acre ‘eye’ on the Universe earlier that week.

The last of 2,004 aluminum surface panels was recently installed on the GBT’s two-acre (100 m x 110 m) collecting dish. The telescope is located at NRAO’s Green Bank site, in rural Pocahontas County, West Virginia.