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Around the World in 8 meetings

Around the World in 8 meetings

AUI and AWB travel the Embassy Circuit to Bring New Opportunities to South America Washington DC – A casual stroll down Embassy Row can send a traveler from one continent to another in matter of seconds. Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and Astronomers Without Borders (AWB) recently made such a trip to bring a stellar experience to the...

Image Release: ALMA Gives Passing Comet Its Close-up

Image Release: ALMA Gives Passing Comet Its Close-up

As comet 46P/Wirtanen neared Earth on December 2, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) took a remarkably close look the innermost regions of the comet’s coma, the gaseous envelope around its nucleus. ALMA imaged the comet when it was approximately 16.5 million kilometers from Earth. At its closet on December...

Fragmenting Disk Gives Birth to Binary Star ‘Odd Couple’

Fragmenting Disk Gives Birth to Binary Star ‘Odd Couple’

One Star Potentially Formed in Planet-like Fashion Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that two young stars forming from the same swirling protoplanetary disk may be twins — in the sense that they came from the same parent cloud of star-forming material. Beyond that, however, they have...

The Epoch of Planet Formation, Times Twenty

The Epoch of Planet Formation, Times Twenty

ALMA Campaign Provides Unprecedented Views of the Birth of Planets Astronomers have cataloged nearly 4,000 exoplanets in orbit around distant stars. Though the discovery of these newfound worlds has taught us much, there is still a great deal we do not know about the birth of planets and the precise cosmic recipes that spawn the wide array of...