Infalling and Outflowing Gas Give More Complete Understanding of the Evolution of Galaxies A billion light-years from Earth lies one of the universe’s most massive structures, a giant elliptical galaxy surrounded by a sprawling cluster of other galaxies known as Abell 2597. At the core of the central galaxy, a supermassive black hole is powering...
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Image Release: ALMA Maps Europa’s Temperature
First Spatially Resolved, Complete Thermal Data Set of Jupiter's Icy Moon Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has a chaotic surface terrain that is fractured and cracked, suggesting a long-standing history of geologic activity. A new series of four images of Europa taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has helped astronomers...
When Is a Nova Not a ‘Nova’? When a White Dwarf and a Brown Dwarf Collide
Synopsis: Using ALMA, an international team of astronomers found evidence that a white dwarf (the elderly remains of a Sun-like star) 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 as Nova sub Capite Cygni (a New Star below the Head of the...
Fierce Winds Quench Wildfire-like Starbirth in Far-flung Galaxy
Synopsis: Astronomers using ALMA, with the aid of a gravitational lens, have detected the most-distant galactic “wind” of molecules ever observed, seen when the universe was only one billion years old. By tracing the outflow of hydroxyl (OH) molecules – which herald the presence of star-forming gas in galaxies – the researchers show how some...