ALMA Astronomy News

Two independent teams of astronomers have used Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to uncover convincing evidence that three young planets are in orbit around the infant star HD 163296. Using a novel planet-finding technique, the astronomers identified three disturbances in the gas-filled disc around the young star: the most reliable evidence yet that newly formed planets are in or...

Dust Accumulation to Form a New Planet Outside Just-Formed Planets The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has successfully observed a site of planet formation by detecting a high concentration of dust grains, a planet-forming material, outside the orbits of just-formed planets.

The ALMA and APEX telescopes have peered deep into space — back to the time when the Universe was one tenth of its current age — and witnessed the beginnings of gargantuan cosmic pileups: the impending collisions of young, starburst galaxies. Astronomers thought that these events occurred around three billion years after the Big Bang, so they were surprised when the new observations revealed them...

Astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to discover the tale-telling signs of planets in the young, likely planet-forming disk around the star MWC 758. They obtained an “ultra” high-resolution image revealing the disk having not only an off-centered cavity but also a spiral arm corresponding to one previously seen in reflected light.

New observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) suggest that planet formation can occur even in harsh stellar environments previously thought to be inhospitable.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) have discovered that both, starburst galaxies in the early Universe, and a star-forming region in a nearby galaxy, contain a much higher proportion of massive stars than is found in more peaceful galaxies. These findings challenge current ideas about how galaxies evolved, changing our under...

Astronomers detected a faint but definite signal of oxygen in a galaxy located 13.28 billion light-years away from us, through observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Breaking their records, this marks the most distant oxygen ever detected in the Universe. Referencing infrared observations, the team determined that star formation in the galaxy started at an unex...

Astronomers expect that the first galaxies, those that formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, would share many similarities with some of the dwarf galaxies we see in the nearby Universe today. These early agglomerations of a few billion stars would then become the building blocks of the larger galaxies that came to dominate the Universe after the first few billion years.

Researchers have discovered the most distant Milky-Way-like galaxy yet observed. Dubbed REBELS-25, this disc galaxy seems as orderly as present-day galaxies, but we see it as it was when the Universe was only 700 million years old. 

For the first time, astronomers have captured images of a star other than the Sun in enough detail to track the motion of bubbling gas on its surface. The images of the star, R Doradus, were obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in July and August 2023. They show giant, hot bubbles of gas, 75 times the size of the Sun, appearing on the surface and sinking back into...

Interferometry of stunning spiral arms around young star reveals gravity’s hand in planet formation. Traditionally, planet formation has been described as a “bottom-up” process, as dust grains gradually collect into bigger conglomerations over tens of millions of years, from microns to centimeters to meters to kilometers. Alternatively, another theory proposes that planets can form rapidly by a “t...

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. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is conducting an unprecedented survey of nearby disk galaxies to study their stellar...

Using the combined power of the Subaru Telescope and the ALMA radio telescope, astronomers have discovered a system where two distant galaxies, located 12.8 billion light-years away, are in the process of merging. These galaxies, hosting faint quasars at their centers, could be the ancestors of the brightest and most massive quasars in the early Universe, shedding light on the mysterious processes...

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of astronomers found evidence that a white dwarf(the elderly remains of a star like the Sun) and a brown dwarf(a failed star without the mass to sustain nuclear fusion) collided in a short-lived blaze of glory that was witnessed on Earth in 1670 asNovasub Capite Cygni (a New Star below the Head of the Swan), which...

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration, was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.

Astronomers have already cataloged nearly 4,000 exoplanets in orbit around distant stars. Though we have learned much about these newfound worlds, there is still much we do not know about the steps of planet formation 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...

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), two teams of astronomers have for the first time discovered a planet-forming disk with misaligned rings around a triple star system, called GW Orionis . The astronomers give two possible scenarios for the misalignment: either the disk was torn apart by the gravitational pull from the stars , or by a newborn planet . 

An international team of astronomers used two of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world to create more than three hundred images of planet-forming disks around very young stars in the Orion Clouds. These images reveal new details about the birthplaces of planets and the earliest stages of star formation.

How do supermassive black holes get so big? An international team of astronomers, including scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) have discovered a powerful, rotating, magnetic wind that they believe is helping a galaxy’s central supermassive black hole to grow.

Most of the Universe is invisible to the human eye. The building blocks of stars are only revealed in wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. Astronomers recently used two very different and powerful telescopes to discover twin disks and twin parallel jets erupting from young stars in a multiple-star system. This discovery was unexpected and unprecedented, given the stars, disks, and jets' age,...

At the 244th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting, researchers unveiled groundbreaking findings from a pioneering high-angular resolution program that sheds new light on planet formation in circumstellar disks around young stars in binary systems. Leveraging the unparalleled capabilities of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile and the Keck II 10-meter telescope i...

Galaxies begin to “die” when they stop forming stars , but until now astronomers had never clearly glimpsed the start of this process in a far-away galaxy. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have seen a galaxy ejecting nearly half of its star-forming gas. This ejection is happening at a startling rate, equivalent to 10 000 Suns-worth of gas a year — the gala...

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team of astronomers have directly measured winds in Jupiter's middle atmosphere for the first time. By analyzing the aftermath of a comet collision from the 1990s, the researchers have revealed incredibly powerful winds, with speeds of up to 1450 kilometers an hour, near Jupiter's poles. They could represent what the team has describ...

An international team anchored by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which is known for capturing the first image of a black hole in the galaxy Messier 87, has now imaged the heart of the nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A in unprecedented detail. The astronomers pinpoint the location of the central supermassive black hole and reveal how a gigantic jet is being born. Most remarkably, on...

ALMA sheds light on 88-year-old astronomical mystery An unusual group of stars in the Orion constellation have revealed their secrets. FU Orionis, a double star system, first caught astronomers' attention in 1936 when the central star suddenly became 1,000 times brighter than usual. This behavior, expected from dying stars, had never been seen in a young star like FU Orionis. The strange phenomeno...