ALMA – Page 2 – Astronomy Now

Astronomers detect radioactive molecules in debris from stellar collision

1 August 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers studying the remnants of a collision between two stars have made the first direct detection of radioactive material outside Earth’s solar system, debris that was blasted into space from one star’s deep interior

‘Radio rebound’ observed in aftermath of gamma ray burst

27 July 2018 Astronomy Now

A powerful gamma ray burst two billion light years away produced a long-lasting “radio rebound” shock wave that surprised astronomers, providing new insights into such cataclysmic explosions.

Quasar provides clues about conditions in the early Universe

10 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have found a brilliant quasar harbouring a super-massive black hole some 13 billion light years away, one of the most distant ever discovered, providing a tool of sorts to study conditions in the very early Universe.

Three planets found around dust-shrouded star

14 June 2018 Astronomy Now

By measuring the motion of carbon monoxide molecules in a protoplanetary disc, two teams of astronomers have found three planets lurking in the rings of dust around a star just a few million years old.

Peering into the shrouded heart of a luminous Seyfert galaxy

29 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Seyfert galaxies are unusually luminous, powered by supermassive black holes feeding on galactic dust and debris. It is difficult to peer into the dust-shrouded cores of such galaxies, but the European Southern Observatory, combining radio and optical observations, provides an intriguing glimpse.

Star formation underway 250 million years after Big Bang

17 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array have observed a galaxy 13.3 billion light years away that includes stars that must have been shining just 250 million years after the Big Bang.

A very, very bad day for Earth’s nearest exoplanet neighbour

27 February 2018 Astronomy Now

Proxima b, the nearest exoplanet to Earth, was blasted by a tremendous solar flare last March, an outburst that bathed the world in 4,000 times the amount of radiation Earth receives from a major flare.

Astronomers shed light on formation of black holes and galaxies

28 December 2017 Astronomy Now

Stars forming in galaxies appear to be influenced by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, but the mechanism of how that happens has not been clear to astronomers until now.

Infant stars discovered surprisingly near galaxy’s supermassive black hole

28 November 2017 Astronomy Now

At the centre of our galaxy, in the immediate vicinity of its supermassive black hole, is a region wracked by powerful tidal forces and bathed in intense ultraviolet light and X-ray radiation. These harsh conditions, astronomers surmise, do not favour star formation, especially low-mass stars like our Sun. Surprisingly, new observations suggest otherwise.

ALMA discovers cold dust around nearest star

3 November 2017 Astronomy Now

The ALMA Observatory in Chile has detected dust around the closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri. These new observations reveal the glow coming from cold dust in a region between one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun. The data also hint at the presence of an even cooler outer dust belt and may indicate the presence of an elaborate planetary system.