Summary: Using the both ALMA and the VLT, astronomers have imaged the cold, rock-strewn rings encircling the planet Uranus. Rather than observing the reflected sunlight from these rings, ALMA and the VLT imaged the millimeter and mid-infrared “glow” naturally emitted by the frigidly cold particles of the rings themselves. The rings of Uranus are...
Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have awarded the 2019 Karl G. Jansky Lectureship to Dr. Anneila Sargent, Ira S. Bowen Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of AUI to recognize...
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...
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...