Astropix – Page 10 – National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Multiwavelength Image of SPT0311-58

A composite image showing ALMA data (red) of the two galaxies of SPT0311-58. These galaxies are shown over a background from the Hubble Space Telescope (blue and green). The ALMA data show the two galaxies’ dusty glow. The image of the galaxy on the right is distorted by gravitational lensing. The nearer foreground lensing galaxy is the green object between the two galaxies imaged by ALMA.

Earliest Phase of Star Formation Ever Observed in Highly Hostile Environment

An ALMA image of the center of the Milky Way galaxy showing the location of 11 young protostars within about 3 light-years of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole. The lines indicate the direction of the bipolar lobes created by high-velocity jets from the protostars. The illustrated star in the middle of the image indicates the location of Sagittarius A*, the 4 million solar mass supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. The next image is a zoom-in to one of the protostars.

Illustration of the formation of a young star system.

Outflows from a Young Solar System

Infant stars, like those recently identified near the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, are surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas. In this artist’s conception of an infant solar system, the young star pulls material from its surroundings into a rotating disk (right) and generates outflowing jets of material (left).

Jets in a Newly Formed Star

Double-lobe feature produced by jets from one of the newly forming stars. ALMA discovered 11 of these telltale signs of star formation remarkably close to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

A Starbursting Merger in the Early Universe

Artist impression of two starbursting galaxies beginning to merge in the early universe.

Pair of Exceptionally Rare Hyper-luminous Galaxies Discovered with ALMA

Composite image of ADFS-27 galaxy pair. The background image is from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory. The object was then detected by ESO’s Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope (middle image). ALMA (right) was able to identify two galaxies: ADFS-27N (for North) and ADFS-27S (for South). The starbursting galaxies are about 12.8 billion light-years from Earth and destined to merge into a single, massive galaxy.

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