Tucked away in a star-forming region in the Taurus constellation, a pair of circling stars are displaying some unexpected differences in the circumstellar disks of dust and gas that surround them. A new study led by researchers at Lowell Observatory, combining data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and Keck Observatory, has unveiled intriguing findings about planet formation in this binary star system, known as DF Tau, along with other systems in this region.
Recent News
Young Stars in the Milky Way’s Backyard Challenge Our Understanding of How They Form
Astronomers have made groundbreaking discoveries about young star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), along with observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, gives new insight into the early stages of massive star formation outside our galaxy.
Astronomers Catch Unprecedented Features at Brink of Active Black Hole
International teams of astronomers monitoring a supermassive black hole in the heart of a distant galaxy have detected features never seen before using data from NASA missions and other facilities including the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The features include the launch of a plasma jet moving at nearly one-third the speed of light and unusual, rapid X-ray fluctuations likely arising from near the very edge of the black hole.
IMAGE RELEASE: A New Look at the Crab Nebula
Astronomers produced this dramatic new, highly-detailed image of the Crab Nebula by combining data from telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum, from the long waves seen by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to the extremely short waves seen by the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
The Crab Nebula, the result of a bright supernova explosion seen by Chinese and other astronomers in the year 1054, is some 6,500 light-years from Earth. At its center is a superdense neutron star, rotating once every 33 milliseconds, shooting out rotating lighthouse-like beams of radio waves and light — a pulsar. The nebula’s intricate shape is caused by a complex interplay of the pulsar, a fast-moving wind of particles coming from the pulsar, and material originally ejected by the supernova explosion and by the star itself before the explosion.
This image combines data from five different telescopes: The VLA (radio) in red; Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared) in yellow; Hubble Space Telescope (visible) in green; XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) in blue; and Chandra X-Ray Observatory (X-ray) in purple.
The new VLA, Hubble, and Chandra observations all were made at nearly the same time in November of 2012. A team of scientists led by Gloria Dubner of IAFE, the National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET), and the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina then made a detailed analysis of the newly-revealed details in a quest to gain new insights into the complex physics of the object. They are reporting their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.
New details from the study show interactions between fast-moving particles and magnetic fields similar to structures seen on the Sun, other features seen to appear at multiple wavelengths, and structures that may indicate features near the star before it exploded. Two separate jets of material from near the pulsar appear in the X-ray and the radio images.
“Comparing these new images, made at different wavelengths, is providing us with a wealth of new detail about the Crab Nebula. Though the Crab has been studied extensively for years, we still have much to learn about it,” Dubner said.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
Recent News
Double the Disks, Double the Discovery: New Insights into Planet Formation in DF Tau
Tucked away in a star-forming region in the Taurus constellation, a pair of circling stars are displaying some unexpected differences in the circumstellar disks of dust and gas that surround them. A new study led by researchers at Lowell Observatory, combining data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and Keck Observatory, has unveiled intriguing findings about planet formation in this binary star system, known as DF Tau, along with other systems in this region.
Young Stars in the Milky Way’s Backyard Challenge Our Understanding of How They Form
Astronomers have made groundbreaking discoveries about young star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), along with observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, gives new insight into the early stages of massive star formation outside our galaxy.
Astronomers Catch Unprecedented Features at Brink of Active Black Hole
International teams of astronomers monitoring a supermassive black hole in the heart of a distant galaxy have detected features never seen before using data from NASA missions and other facilities including the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The features include the launch of a plasma jet moving at nearly one-third the speed of light and unusual, rapid X-ray fluctuations likely arising from near the very edge of the black hole.