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ALMA Reveals Cradles of Dense Cores: the Birthplace of Massive Stars

Recent News

Telescope Tag-Team Discovers Galactic Cluster’s Bizarre Secrets

Towards the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, in the constellation Sagittarius, astronomers have discovered 10 monstrous neutron stars. These particular stars, called pulsars, reside together in globular cluster Terzan 5, a crowded home for hundreds of thousands of different types of stars. In one of the most jam-packed places in our Milky Way, many pulsars in Terzan 5 have evolved into bizarre and eccentric forms.

Old Data, New Tricks Discover Pulsar in Galactic Plane

A team of astronomers has found a new tool to discover pulsars, rapidly rotating neutron stars that blast out pulses of radiation at regular intervals ranging from seconds to milliseconds. Named the VLA Low-band Ionosphere and Transient Experiment (VLITE), the tool was made possible by a collaboration between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

ALMA Reveals Cradles of Dense Cores: the Birthplace of Massive Stars

Taiwanese research team used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe a large molecular gas clump — named G33.92+0.11 — where a cluster of massive stars is forming.  ALMA revealed, in unprecedented detail, the fine structure of the molecular gas at the center of the region, where two surprisingly large molecular gas arms about 3 light-years across, appear to be spiraling around two massive molecular cores.

These results show that the large molecular arms are indeed the cradles of dense cores, which are current or future birthplaces of massive stars. These results represent a crucial step forward in the understanding of how mass distributes to form both massive cores and massive stars.

Details on this result can be found here.

Contact:

Valeria Foncea
Education and Public Outreach Officer
Joint ALMA Observatory
Santiago, Chile
Tel: +56 2 467 6258
Cell: +56 9 75871963
Email: [email protected]

Masaaki Hiramatsu
Education and Public Outreach Officer, NAOJ Chile
Observatory Tokyo, Japan
Tel: +81 422 34 3630
E-mail: [email protected]

Charles E. Blue
Public Information Officer
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
Tel: +1 434 296 0314
Cell: +1 434.242.9559
E-mail: [email protected]

Richard Hook
Public Information Officer, ESO
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: [email protected]

Recent News

Telescope Tag-Team Discovers Galactic Cluster’s Bizarre Secrets

Towards the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, in the constellation Sagittarius, astronomers have discovered 10 monstrous neutron stars. These particular stars, called pulsars, reside together in globular cluster Terzan 5, a crowded home for hundreds of thousands of different types of stars. In one of the most jam-packed places in our Milky Way, many pulsars in Terzan 5 have evolved into bizarre and eccentric forms.

Old Data, New Tricks Discover Pulsar in Galactic Plane

A team of astronomers has found a new tool to discover pulsars, rapidly rotating neutron stars that blast out pulses of radiation at regular intervals ranging from seconds to milliseconds. Named the VLA Low-band Ionosphere and Transient Experiment (VLITE), the tool was made possible by a collaboration between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.