A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has completed the first census of molecular clouds in the nearby Universe. The study produced the first images of nearby galaxies with the same sharpness and quality as optical imaging and revealed that stellar nurseries do not all look and act the same. In fact, they’re as diverse as the people, homes, neighborhoods, and regions that make up our own world.
Jets from Massive Protostars Might be Very Different from Lower-Mass Systems, Astronomers Find
A highly-detailed VLA image indicates that the jets of material propelled outward by young stars much more massive than the Sun may be very different from those ejected by less-massive young stars.
IMAGE RELEASE: New Look at a Bright Stellar Nursery
New, high-resolution VLA images of a giant molecular cloud where new stars are being born show changes since a set of observations made more than two decades ago. Tracking changes in this region over time can reveal new details about the process of star formation and the interactions of outflows from young stars.
ALMA Shows Massive Young Stars Forming in “Chaotic Mess”
Astronomers used ALMA to study three young, high-mass stars and found, not the orderly, stable process of accreting new material seen in low-mass stars, but instead a “chaotic mess.” They conclude that their observations support a proposed “disordered infall” model for massive young stars that was supported by earlier computer simulations.
Catching a Radio Surprise
The Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS) is an ambitious project to make a high-resolution radio map of nearly…
ALMA Finds Possible Sign of Neutron Star in Supernova 1987A
Based on ALMA observations and a theoretical follow-up study, scientists suggest that a neutron star might be hiding deep inside the remains of Supernova 1987A.