Latest news with #ALMA
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
ALMA lets astronomers see building blocks of early galaxies
Chile's ALMA observatory, which houses some of the world's most powerful telescopes, has captured its most detailed images to date of the building blocks of the early universe -- primarily cold gases, dust and stellar light in 39 galaxies. "We've never achieved so much detail and depth in galaxies from the early universe," Sergio Martin, head of Scientific Operations at ALMA, told AFP during a presentation of the research at University of Concepcion in Santiago. Due to its dark skies and clear air, Chile hosts the telescopes of more than 30 countries, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) that was used in the findings. The research was led by Rodrigo Herrera-Camus, director of the Millennium Nucleus of Galaxies (MINGAL) of Chile, who told AFP the new images provide "the opportunity to study how stars are born." The survey also found that stars emerged in "giant clumps," Herrera-Camus said. By combining ALMA's findings with images from the James Webb and Hubble telescopes, researchers were able to learn more about how galaxies evolve, interact, and form stars. The ALMA telescope was developed by the European Southern Observatory, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. axl/ksb/sla/jgc


Miami Herald
a day ago
- Science
- Miami Herald
Driest place on Earth blanked by rare snowfall in Chile. See winter wonderland
Nestled between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, the Atacama Desert has earned the title of the driest place on Earth. The desert only sees rain a few times per century, or in some reaches of the Atacama, rain has never been recorded. It's possibly even more rare when the fleeting rain aligns with freezing temperatures, and the landscape is blanketed by snow. But that's exactly what happened June 25 when temperatures reached 10 degrees Fahrenheit and heavy winds blew snow across the desert, according to officials at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a scientific observatory on the Chajnantor plateau. The antennas entered 'modo supervivencia,' survival mode, as wind whipped snow across the sand and the brown landscape turned white, according to a June 25 post on X from the Observatorio ALMA. It's the first time in 12 years snow has fallen at the observatory, officials told Chile news outlets. Getting snow where the antennas are located is not entirely uncommon, but they sit more than 16,000 feet above sea level, the observatory clarified in X comments, CNN Chile reported. Where the ALMA is located, or observatory building, it's a lot less common, officials said, because the facility is at 9,500 feet above sea level and faces the Salar de Atacama, a large salt flat. The observatory shared images on X of the area after the storm blew through June 30. 'In winter, some storms are fueled by moisture from the Pacific, which can extend precipitation even to the Atacama Desert's coastal areas,' Raúl Cordero, a climatologist at the University of Santiago, told LiveScience. In this case, an unusual 'cold core' moved across northern Chile and was accompanied by heavy rainfall further north, closing schools and causing widespread power outages and landslides, LiveScience reported. It may be too early to say whether this particular weather event was the result of larger climatic change, Cordero told AFP, but the Atacama is likely to see more precipitation as global temperatures rise. The Atacama Desert is between 600 and 700 miles long, and has been the center of regional conflict for much of the 19th century as the countries of Chile, Bolivia and Peru fought over the desert's natural resources, according to Britannica. The desert is in northern Chile, touching southern Peru, southwestern Bolivia and northwestern Argentina. Google Translate was used to translate the news article from CNN Chile. Grok, X's AI bot, was used to translate the X posts from the Observatorio ALMA.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers discover baby planets taking their 1st steps in nearby stellar nursery (images)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers may have caught the first stages of planets being born around infant stars. The discovery came about when a team of scientists studied 78 planet-forming, flattened clouds of gas and dust, or "protoplanetary disks," in the Ophiuchus star-forming region. This stellar nursery, also known as the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, is located around 460 light-years from Earth, making it the closest star-forming region to our solar system. The team discovered previously unseen rings, spirals and other substructures in the swirling, plate-like planet-forming clouds around a number of stars just a few hundred thousand years old. If that seems ancient, consider this: Our middle-aged star, the sun, is 4.6 billion years old. The team's findings suggest stars and planets evolve together in environments that are rich in gas and dust. Stars are born when overly dense regions in vast clouds of gas and dust called molecular clouds collapse under their own gravity. This collapse creates a protostar wrapped in a pre-natal envelope of material from which it continues to gather mass. This matter-harvesting continues until the star is sufficiently massive enough to trigger the fusion of hydrogen to helium at the heart of the star, the nuclear process that defines what a fully grown or main-sequence star end result is a young star surrounded by a flattened disk of gas and dust within which planets can begin to form. When planets begin to take shape in these disks, their gravitational influence can gather or eject materials. That process gives rise to substructures in the protoplanetary disk. However, the big question is: At what point in the evolution of planetary systems do these substructures begin to appear? That's a question astronomers have been attempting to answer using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an array of 66 antennas in northern Chile that work together to act as form a single telescope. In particular, two large programs conducted by ALMA, DSHARP and eDisk, have discovered intricate details of structures in protoplanetary disks. DSHARP found that such structures are common in the disks that surround 20 young stars under 1 million years of age. Meanwhile, eDisk studied younger protostars that are just between 10,000 and 100,000 years old and thus still in their matter-harvesting stage. This revealed that structures present around 1 million-year-old stars are absent around stars 10 and 100 times younger. That implies the characteristics of a protoplanetary disk are dependent on the age of its central star. The new study's team looked at stars with ages between those studied in the DSHARP and eDisk programs, turning to super-resolution imaging provided by public software called "Python module for Radio Interferometry Imaging with Sparse Modeling," or (PRIISM), and applied this to ALMA archival data. This allowed the researchers to obtain a resolution three times greater than what's provided by standard procedures for half of the imaged protoplanetary disks. The team's results were further bolstered by the fact their Ophiuchus sample was four times larger than what was used in the DSHARP and eDisk programs. The investigation revealed 27 of the 78 examined disks had ring or spiral structures, 15 of which had never been seen before. This revealed substructures form in disks that have widths 30 times the distance between Earth and the sun (30 astronomical units). This, in turn, implies that substructures form much earlier than previously thought — while such disks are still abundant with gas and dust. In other words, infant stars and planets seem to evolve together — at least, in the Ophiuchus stellar nursery. Related Stories: —The deadly atmosphere on Venus could help us find habitable worlds. Here's how. — Could nearby stars have habitable exoplanets? NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory hopes to find out — Astronomers discover origins of mysterious double hot Jupiter exoplanets: 'It is a dance of sorts' "These findings, bridging the gap between the eDisk and DSHARP projects, were enabled by the innovative imaging that allows for both achieving high resolution and a large number of samples," Ayumu Shoshi, team leader and a researcher at Kyushu University, said in a statement. "While these findings only pertain to the disks in Ophiuchus, future studies of other star-forming regions will reveal whether this tendency is universal." The team's research was published in The Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan


Malay Mail
6 days ago
- Science
- Malay Mail
Snow blankets Atacama Desert, the world's driest, in rare weather event
SANTIAGO, June 27 — Residents of the world's driest desert, the Atacama in northern Chile, woke up Thursday to a jaw-dropping spectacle: its famous lunar landscape blanketed in snow. "INCREDIBLE! The Atacama Desert, the world's most arid, is COVERED IN SNOW," the ALMA observatory, situated 2,900 meters (9,500 feet) above sea level, wrote on X, alongside a video of vast expanses covered in a dusting of white. The observatory added that while snow is common on the nearby Chajnanator Plateau, situated at over 5,000 meters and where its gigantic telescope is situated, it had not had snow at its main facility in a decade. University of Santiago climatologist Raul Cordero told AFP that it was too soon to link the snow to climate change but said that climate modelling had shown that "this type of event, meaning precipitation in the Atacama desert, will likely become more frequent." The Atacama, home to the world's darkest skies, has for decades been the go-to location for the world's most advanced telescopes. The ALMA telescope, which was developed by the European Southern Observatory, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, is widely recognized as being the most powerful. — AFP


New York Post
7 days ago
- Science
- New York Post
Astronomers make groundbreaking discovery about largest comet ever observed flying through deep space
A groundbreaking discovery was recently made about the largest comet ever observed hurtling toward the sun from the Oort Cloud in the outer reaches of our solar system. Astronomers recently got a close-up look at the comet, known as C/2014 UN271, flying through deep space with the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile. The icy giant is 85 miles across and is more than 10 times the size of any known comet, according to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The NRAO reported that astronomers found that new observations from the comet showed jets of carbon monoxide gas erupting out from the comet's solid icy core. Using the ALMA, the researchers found the comet in deep space near Neptune or about 17 times the distance between the Sun and Earth, according to a release from NRAO. Using the ALMA telescope's high sensitivity and resolution, the researchers were able to focus on the carbon monoxide and heat being emitted from the comet. Nathan Roth of American University and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the lead author of the study, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, discussed how this gives researchers insight into the workings of this frozen rock hurtling through space. 4 Astronomers discovered jets of carbon monoxide gas erupting out from the comet's solid icy core. NRAO/Melissa Weiss 4 The comet was spotted in deep space near Neptune. NASA Goddard 'These measurements give us a look at how this enormous, icy world works,' Roth said. 'We're seeing explosive outgassing patterns that raise new questions about how this comet will evolve as it continues its journey toward the inner solar system.' Using previous ALMA observations and these newest findings, researchers were able to measure the comet. They measured the thermal signal to find the comet's size and amount of dust surrounding its core. 4 Scientists hope the new data will give them a better understanding of the makeup of the solar system. AP 4 Researchers used the ALMA telescope to track the carbon monoxide and heat being emitted from the comet. Diogo Josí© – Researchers believe that as C/2014 UN271 gets closer to the sun, they will see more frozen gas begin to vaporize off the titan of a comet. This could possibly give researchers more information about the primitive makeup of this icy giant. The researchers also hope that this will give a better understanding of the makeup of the solar system.