AUI will present at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix from January 4-8.
Recent News
ALMA Helps Unmask Monster Black Hole Behind Record-Breaking Cosmic Burst
Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) together with a suite of space- and ground-based telescopes, to study AT 2024wpp, the most luminous fast blue optical transient (LFBOT) ever observed.
Astronomers Make First Radio Detection of Rare Supernova Type, Revealing Secrets of Stellar Death
Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array have captured the first-ever radio signals from a rare class of stellar explosion known as a Type Ibn supernova.
Astronomers Discover a Superheated Star Factory in the Early Universe
Glowing deep red from the distant past: galaxy Y1 shines thanks to dust grains heated by newly-formed stars (circled in this image from the James Webb telescope). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Diego (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain), J. D’Silva (U. Western Australia), A. Koekemoer (STScI), J. Summers & R. Windhorst (ASU), and H. Yan (U. Missouri)
Astronomers have uncovered a previously unknown, extreme kind of star factory by taking the temperature of a distant galaxy using the ALMA telescope. The galaxy is glowing intensely in superheated cosmic dust while forming stars 180 times faster than our own Milky Way. The discovery indicates how galaxies could have grown quickly when the universe was very young, solving a long-standing puzzle for astronomers.
The first generations of stars formed under conditions very different from anywhere we can see in the nearby universe today. Astronomers are studying these differences using powerful telescopes that can detect galaxies so far away their light has travelled towards us for billions of year.
Now, an international team of astronomers led by Tom Bakx at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden has measured the temperature of one of the most distant known star factories. The galaxy, known as Y1, is so far away that its light has taken over 13 billion years to reach us.
This research is presented in the paper A warm ultraluminous infrared galaxy just 600 million years after the Big Bang in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, lead author Tom Bakx (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden).
Read more in this press release from Chalmers University.
About ALMA
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).
ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
This news article was originally published on the NRAO website on November 12, 2025.
Recent News
AUI to Attend AAS 247 Conference
AUI will present at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix from January 4-8.
ALMA Helps Unmask Monster Black Hole Behind Record-Breaking Cosmic Burst
Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) together with a suite of space- and ground-based telescopes, to study AT 2024wpp, the most luminous fast blue optical transient (LFBOT) ever observed.
Astronomers Make First Radio Detection of Rare Supernova Type, Revealing Secrets of Stellar Death
Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array have captured the first-ever radio signals from a rare class of stellar explosion known as a Type Ibn supernova.