From National Radio Astronomy Observatory (US) and MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy[MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE): “New Study Reveals Previously Unseen Star Formation in Milky Way”

From National Radio Astronomy Observatory (US)

and

MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy[MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE)

July 22, 2021

Dave Finley, Public Information Officer
(505) 241-9210
dfinley@nrao.edu

Credit: Brunthaler et al., Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/Associated Universities Inc (US)/National Science Foundation (US).

Astronomers using two of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes have made a detailed and sensitive survey of a large segment of our home galaxy — the Milky Way — detecting previously unseen tracers of massive star formation, a process that dominates galactic ecosystems. The scientists combined the capabilities of the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and the 100-meter Effelsberg Telescope in Germany to produce high-quality data that will serve researchers for years to come.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)Karl G Jansky Very Large Array located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, ~50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twenty-eight 25-meter radio telescopes.

Effelsberg Radio Telescope- a radio telescope in the Ahr Hills (part of the Eifel) in Bad Münstereifel(DE)

Stars with more than about ten times the mass of our Sun are important components of the Galaxy and strongly affect their surroundings. However, understanding how these massive stars are formed has proved challenging for astronomers. In recent years, this problem has been tackled by studying the Milky Way at a variety of wavelengths, including radio and infrared. This new survey, called GLOSTAR (Global view of the Star formation in the Milky Way), was designed to take advantage of the vastly improved capabilities that an upgrade project completed in 2012 gave the VLA to produce previously unobtainable data.

GLOSTAR has excited astronomers with new data on the birth and death processes of massive stars, as well on the tenuous material between the stars. The GLOSTAR team of researchers has published a series of papers in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics reporting initial results of their work, including detailed studies of several individual objects.

“A Global View on Star Formation: The GLOSTAR Galactic Plane Survey. I. Overview and first results for the Galactic longitude range 28°< l < 36°”
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2021/07/aa39856-20/aa39856-20.html

“A Global View on Star Formation: The GLOSTAR Galactic Plane Survey. II. Supernova remnants in the first quadrant of the Milky Way?”
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2021/07/aa39873-20/aa39873-20.html

“A Global View on Star Formation: The GLOSTAR Galactic Plane Survey. III. 6.7 GHz Methanol maser survey in Cygnus X”
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2021/07/aa40817-21/aa40817-21.html

“A Global View on Star Formation: The GLOSTAR Galactic Plane Survey. IV. Radio continuum detections of young stellar objects in the Galactic Centre Region”
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2021/07/aa40802-21/aa40802-21.html

Observations continue and more results will be published later.

The survey detected telltale tracers of the early stages of massive star formation, including compact regions of hydrogen gas ionized by the powerful radiation from young stars, and radio emission from methanol (wood alcohol) molecules that can pinpoint the location of very young stars still deeply shrouded by the clouds of gas and dust in which they are forming.

The survey also found many new remnants of supernova explosions — the dramatic deaths of massive stars. Previous studies had found fewer than a third of the expected number of supernova remnants in the Milky Way. In the region it studied, GLOSTAR more than doubled the number found using the VLA data alone, with more expected to appear in the Effelsberg data.

“This is an important step to solve this longstanding mystery of the missing supernova remnants,” said Rohit Dokara, a Ph.D student at the MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy[MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) and lead author on a paper about the remnants.

The GLOSTAR team combined data from the VLA and the Effelsberg telescope to obtain a complete view of the region they studied. The multi-antenna VLA — an interferometer — combines the signals from widely-separated antennas to make images with very high resolution that show small details. However, such a system often cannot also detect large-scale structures. The 100-meter-diameter Effelsberg telescope provided the data on structures larger than those the VLA could detect, making the image complete.

“This clearly demonstrates that the Effelberg telescope is still very crucial, even after 50 years of operation,” said Andreas Brunthaler of MPIfR, project leader and first author of the survey’s overview paper.

Visible light is strongly absorbed by dust, which radio waves can readily penetrate. Radio telescopes are essential to revealing the dust-shrouded regions in which young stars form.

The results from GLOSTAR, combined with other radio and infrared surveys, “offers astronomers a nearly complete census of massive star-forming clusters at various stages of formation, and this will have lasting value for future studies,” said team member William Cotton, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), who is an expert in combining interferometer and single-telescope data.

“GLOSTAR is the first map of the Galactic Plane at radio wavelengths that detects many of the important star formation tracers at high spatial resolution. The detection of atomic and molecular spectral lines is critical to determine the location of star formation and to better understand the structure of the Galaxy,” said Dana Balser, also of NRAO.

The initiator of GLOSTAR, the MPIfR’s Karl Menten, added, “It’s great to see the beautiful science resulting from two of our favorite radio telescopes joining forces.”

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

MPIFR campus

Effelsberg Radio Telescope- a radio telescope in the Ahr Hills (part of the Eifel) in Bad Münstereifel(DE)

The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie] (DE) is located in Bonn, Germany. It is one of 80 institutes in the MPG Society.

By combining the already existing radio astronomy faculty of the University of Bonn led by Otto Hachenberg with the new MPG institute the MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy was formed. In 1972 the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg was opened. The institute building was enlarged in 1983 and 2002.

The institute was founded in 1966 by the MPG Society as the “MPG Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) (DE)”.

The foundation of the institute was closely linked to plans in the German astronomical community to construct a competitive large radio telescope in (then) West Germany. In 1964, Professors Friedrich Becker, Wolfgang Priester and Otto Hachenberg of the Astronomische Institute der Universität Bonn submitted a proposal to the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk for the construction of a large fully steerable radio telescope.

In the same year the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk approved the funding of the telescope project but with the condition that an organization should be found, which would guarantee the operations. It was clear that the operation of such a large instrument was well beyond the possibilities of a single university institute.

Already in 1965 the MPG Society decided in principle to found the MPG Institut für Radioastronomie. Eventually, after a series of discussions, the institute was officially founded in 1966.

a href=”https://sciencesprings.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/from-mpg-visualization-of-newly-formed-synapses-with-unprecedented-resolution/mpg-bloc/&#8221; rel=”attachment wp-att-47599″>

MPG Institute for the Advancement of Science [MPG zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V](DE) is Germany’s most successful research organization. Since its establishment in 1948, no fewer than 18 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists, putting it on a par with the best and most prestigious research institutions worldwide. The more than 15,000 publications each year in internationally renowned scientific journals are proof of the outstanding research work conducted at MPG Institutes – and many of those articles are among the most-cited publications in the relevant field.

What is the basis of this success? The scientific attractiveness of the MPG Society is based on its understanding of research: MPG institutes are built up solely around the world’s leading researchers. They themselves define their research subjects and are given the best working conditions, as well as free reign in selecting their staff. This is the core of the Harnack principle, which dates back to Adolph von Harnack, the first president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, which was established in 1911. This principle has been successfully applied for nearly one hundred years. The MPG Society continues the tradition of its predecessor institution with this structural principle of the person-centered research organization.

The currently 83 MPG Institutes and facilities conduct basic research in the service of the general public in the natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. MPG Institutes focus on research fields that are particularly innovative, or that are especially demanding in terms of funding or time requirements. And their research spectrum is continually evolving: new institutes are established to find answers to seminal, forward-looking scientific questions, while others are closed when, for example, their research field has been widely established at universities. This continuous renewal preserves the scope the Max Planck Society needs to react quickly to pioneering scientific developments.

MPG Society for the Advancement of Science [MPG Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.] is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and renamed the MPG Society in 1948 in honor of its former president, theoretical physicist Max Planck. The society is funded by the federal and state governments of Germany as well as other sources.

According to its primary goal, the MPG Society supports fundamental research in the natural, life and social sciences, the arts and humanities in its 83 (as of January 2014) MPG institutes. The society has a total staff of approximately 17,000 permanent employees, including 5,470 scientists, plus around 4,600 non-tenured scientists and guests. Society budget for 2015 was about €1.7 billion.

The MPG Institutes focus on excellence in research. The MPG Society has a world-leading reputation as a science and technology research organization, with 33 Nobel Prizes awarded to their scientists, and is generally regarded as the foremost basic research organization in Europe and the world. In 2013, the Nature Publishing Index placed the MPG institutes fifth worldwide in terms of research published in Nature journals (after Harvard University (US), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), Stanford University (US) and the National Institutes of Health (US)). In terms of total research volume (unweighted by citations or impact), the MPG Society is only outranked by the Chinese Academy of Sciences [中国科学院] (CN), the Russian Academy of Sciences [Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к](RU) and Harvard University. The Thomson Reuters-Science Watch website placed the Max Planck Society as the second leading research organization worldwide following Harvard University, in terms of the impact of the produced research over science fields.

[The blog owner wishes to editorialize: I do not think all of this boasting is warranted when the combined forces of the MPG Society are being weighed against individual universities and institutions. It is not the combined forces of the cited schools and institutions, that could make some sense. No, it is each separate institution standing on its own.]

The MPG Society and its predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm Society hosted several renowned scientists in their fields, including Otto Hahn, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein.

History

The organization was established in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, or Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG), a non-governmental research organization named for the then German emperor. The KWG was one of the world’s leading research organizations; its board of directors included scientists like Walther Bothe, Peter Debye, Albert Einstein, and Fritz Haber. In 1946, Otto Hahn assumed the position of President of KWG, and in 1948, the society was renamed the MPG Society after its former President (1930–37) Max Planck, who died in 1947.

The MPG Society has a world-leading reputation as a science and technology research organization. In 2006, the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings of non-university research institutions (based on international peer review by academics) placed the MPG Society as No.1 in the world for science research, and No.3 in technology research (behind AT&T Corporation and the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory (US).

The domain mpg.de attracted at least 1.7 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.

MPG Institutes and research groups

The MPG Society consists of over 80 research institutes. In addition, the society funds a number of MPG Research Groups (MPRG) and International MPG Research Schools (IMPRS). The purpose of establishing independent research groups at various universities is to strengthen the required networking between universities and institutes of the MPG Society.

The research units are primarily located across Europe with a few in South Korea and the U.S. In 2007, the Society established its first non-European centre, with an institute on the Jupiter campus of Florida Atlantic University (US) focusing on neuroscience.

The MPG Institutes operate independently from, though in close cooperation with, the universities, and focus on innovative research which does not fit into the university structure due to their interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary nature or which require resources that cannot be met by the state universities.

Internally, MPG Institutes are organized into research departments headed by directors such that each MPG institute has several directors, a position roughly comparable to anything from full professor to department head at a university. Other core members include Junior and Senior Research Fellows.

In addition, there are several associated institutes:

International Max Planck Research Schools
Together with the Association of Universities and other Education Institutions in Germany, the MPG Society established numerous International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS) to promote junior scientists:

Cologne Graduate School of Ageing Research, Cologne
International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems, at the MPG Institute for Intelligent Systems (DE) located in Tübingen and Stuttgart
International Max Planck Research School on Adapting Behavior in a Fundamentally Uncertain World (Uncertainty School), at the Max Planck Institutes for Economics, for Human Development, and/or Research on Collective Goods
International Max Planck Research School for Analysis, Design and Optimization in Chemical and Biochemical Process Engineering, Magdeburg
International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics, Heidelberg at the MPG for Astronomy
International Max Planck Research School for Astrophysics, Garching at the MPG Institute for Astrophysics
International Max Planck Research School for Complex Surfaces in Material Sciences, Berlin
International Max Planck Research School for Computer Science, Saarbrücken
International Max Planck Research School for Earth System Modeling, Hamburg
International Max Planck Research School for Elementary Particle Physics, Munich, at the MPG Institute for Physics
International Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular and Molecular Microbiology, Marburg at the MPG Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology
International Max Planck Research School for Evolutionary Biology, Plön at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology
International Max Planck Research School “From Molecules to Organisms”, Tübingen at the MPG Institute for Developmental Biology
International Max Planck Research School for Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Jena at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
International Max Planck Research School on Gravitational Wave Astronomy, Hannover and Potsdam MPG Institute for Gravitational Physics
International Max Planck Research School for Heart and Lung Research, Bad Nauheim at the MPG Institute for Heart and Lung Research
International Max Planck Research School for Infectious Diseases and Immunity, Berlin at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology
International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, Nijmegen
International Max Planck Research School for Neurosciences, Göttingen
International Max Planck Research School for Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, Tübingen
International Max Planck Research School for Marine Microbiology (MarMic), joint program of the MPG Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, the University of Bremen [Universität Bremen](DE), the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, and the Jacobs University Bremen [Jacobs Universität Bremen] (DE)
International Max Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs, Hamburg
International Max Planck Research School for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Freiburg
International Max Planck Research School for Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences, Munich
International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Biology, Göttingen
International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Cell Biology and Bioengineering, Dresden
International Max Planck Research School Molecular Biomedicine, program combined with the ‘Graduate Programm Cell Dynamics And Disease’ at the University of Münster (DE) and the MPG Institute for Molecular Biomedicine (DE)
International Max Planck Research School on Multiscale Bio-Systems, Potsdam
International Max Planck Research School for Organismal Biology, at the University of Konstanz [Universität Konstanz] (DE) and the MPG Institute for Ornithology (DE)
International Max Planck Research School on Reactive Structure Analysis for Chemical Reactions (IMPRS RECHARGE), Mülheim an der Ruhr, at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (DE)
International Max Planck Research School for Science and Technology of Nano-Systems, Halle at MPG Institute of Microstructure Physics (DE)
International Max Planck Research School for Solar System Science at the University of Göttingen – Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (DE) hosted by MPG Institute for Solar System Research [Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung] (DE)
International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Bonn, at the MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie] (DE) (formerly the International Max Planck Research School for Radio and Infrared Astronomy)
International Max Planck Research School for the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy, Cologne
International Max Planck Research School for Surface and Interface Engineering in Advanced Materials, Düsseldorf at MPG Institute for Iron Research [MPG Institut für Eisenforschung] (DE)
International Max Planck Research School for Ultrafast Imaging and Structural Dynamics, Hamburg

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory (US) Karl G Jansky Very Large Array located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, ~50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twenty-eight 25-meter radio telescopes.

ngVLA, to be located near the location of the NRAO Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (US) site on the plains of San Agustin, fifty miles west of Socorro, NM, USA, at an elevation of 6970 ft (2124 m) with additional mid-baseline stations currently spread over greater New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Mexico.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory (US)Very Long Baseline Array.

European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU)/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

Access to ALMA observing time by the North American astronomical community will be through the North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC).

*The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) comprises ten radio telescopes spanning 5,351 miles. It’s the world’s largest, sharpest, dedicated telescope array. With an eye this sharp, you could be in Los Angeles and clearly read a street sign in New York City!

Astronomers use the continent-sized VLBA to zoom in on objects that shine brightly in radio waves, long-wavelength light that’s well below infrared on the spectrum. They observe blazars, quasars, black holes, and stars in every stage of the stellar life cycle. They plot pulsars, exoplanets, and masers, and track asteroids and planets.

From ALMA (CL): “Astronomers make first clear detection of a moon-forming disc around an exoplanet”

European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU)/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

From ALMA (CL)

22 July, 2021

Valeria Foncea
Education and Public Outreach Officer
Joint ALMA Observatory Santiago – Chile
Phone: +56 2 2467 6258
Cell phone: +56 9 7587 1963
Email: valeria.foncea@alma.cl

Masaaki Hiramatsu
Education and Public Outreach Officer, NAOJ Chile
Observatory
, Tokyo – Japan
Phone: +81 422 34 3630
Email: hiramatsu.masaaki@nao.ac.jp

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Phone: +49 89 3200 6670
Email: pio@eso.org

Amy C. Oliver
Public Information & News Manager
National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), USA
Phone: +1 434 242 9584
Email: aoliver@nrao.edu

All general references:
ALMA Observatory (CL)
European Southern Observatory(EU)
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP)
National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)

This image, taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows wide (left) and close-up (right) views of the moon-forming disc surrounding PDS 70c, a young Jupiter-like planet nearly 400 light-years away. The close-up view shows PDS 70c and its circumplanetary disc centre-front, with the larger circumstellar ring-like disc taking up most of the right-hand side of the image. The star PDS 70 is at the centre of the wide-view image on the left. Two planets have been found in the system-PDS 70c and PDS 70b, the latter not being visible in this image. They have carved a cavity in the circumstellar disc as they gobbled up material from the disc itself, growing in size. In this process, PDS 70c acquired its own circumplanetary disc, which contributes to the growth of the planet and where moons can form. This circumplanetary disc is as large as the Sun-Earth distance and has enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon. Credit: Benisty et al. /ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO).

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter /submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, astronomers have unambiguously detected the presence of a disc around a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. The observations will shed new light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.

“Our work presents a clear detection of a disc in which satellites could be forming,” says Myriam Benisty, a researcher at the University of Grenoble Alpes [Université Grenoble Alpes] (FR), and at the University of Chile [Universidad de Chile] (CL), who led the new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Our ALMA observations were obtained at such exquisite resolution that we could clearly identify that the disc is associated with the planet and we are able to constrain its size for the first time,” she adds.

The disc in question, called a circumplanetary disc, surrounds the exoplanet PDS 70c, one of two giant, Jupiter-like planets orbiting a star nearly 400 light-years away. Astronomers had found hints of a “moon-forming” disc around this exoplanet before but, since they could not clearly tell the disc apart from its surrounding environment, they could not confirm its detection — until now.

In addition, with the help of ALMA, Benisty and her team found that the disc has about the same diameter as the distance from our Sun to the Earth and enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon.

But the results are not only key to finding out how moons arise. “These new observations are also extremely important to prove theories of planet formation that could not be tested until now,” says Jaehan Bae, a researcher from the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science (US), and author on the study.

Planets form in dusty discs around young stars, carving out cavities as they gobble up material from this circumstellar disc to grow. In this process, a planet can acquire its own circumplanetary disc, which contributes to the growth of the planet by regulating the amount of material falling onto it. At the same time, the gas and dust in the circumplanetary disc can come together into progressively larger bodies through multiple collisions, ultimately leading to the birth of moons.

But astronomers do not yet fully understand the details of these processes. “In short, it is still unclear when, where, and how planets and moons form,” explains ESO Research Fellow Stefano Facchini, also involved in the research.

“More than 4000 exoplanets have been found until now, but all of them were detected in mature systems. PDS 70b and PDS 70c, which form a system reminiscent of the Jupiter-Saturn pair, are the only two exoplanets detected so far that are still in the process of being formed,” explains Miriam Keppler, researcher at the MPG Institute for Astronomy [MPG Institut für Astronomie](DE) and one of the co-authors of the study [1].

“This system therefore offers us a unique opportunity to observe and study the processes of planet and satellite formation,” Facchini adds.

PDS 70b and PDS 70c, the two planets making up the system, were first discovered using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and their unique nature means they have been observed with other telescopes and instruments many times since [2].

European Southern Observatory(EU) , Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert •ANTU (UT1; The Sun ) •KUEYEN (UT2; The Moon ) •MELIPAL (UT3; The Southern Cross ), and •YEPUN (UT4; Venus – as evening star). Elevation 2,635 m (8,645 ft) from above Credit J.L. Dauvergne & G. Hüdepohl atacama photo.

The latest high resolution ALMA observations have now allowed astronomers to gain further insights into the system. In addition to confirming the detection of the circumplanetary disc around PDS 70c and studying its size and mass, they found that PDS 70b does not show clear evidence of such a disc, indicating that it was starved of dust material from its birth environment by PDS 70c.

An even deeper understanding of the planetary system will be achieved with ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction on Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama desert.

European Southern Observatory(EU) ELT 39 meter telescope to be on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. located at the summit of the mountain at an altitude of 3,060 metres (10,040 ft).

“The ELT will be key for this research since, with its much higher resolution, we will be able to map the system in great detail,” says co-author Richard Teague, a researcher at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, USA. In particular, by using the ELT’s Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS), the team will be able to look at the gas motions surrounding PDS 70c to get a full 3D picture of the system.

Notes

[1] Despite the similarity with the Jupiter-Saturn pair, note that the disc around PDS 70c is about 500 times larger than Saturn’s rings.

[2] PDS 70b was discovered using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument, while PDS 70c was found using the VLT’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE). The two-planet system has been investigated using the X-shooter instrument too, also installed on ESO’s VLT.

European Southern Observatory(EU) SPHERE extreme adaptive optics system and coronagraphic facility on the VLT UT3, Cerro Paranal, Chile, with an elevation of 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

European Southern Observatory(EU) MUSE on Yepun (UT4) on the Very Large Telescope, Cerro Paranal (CL)

ESO X-shooter on VLT on UT2 at Cerro Paranal, Chile.

The team is composed of Myriam Benisty (Joint Franco-Chilean International Astronomy Unit [Unidad Mixta franco chilena de astronomía], National Centre for Scientific Research [Centre national de la recherche scientifique, [CNRS] (FR), Departamento de Astronomía, University of Chile [Universidad de Chile] (CL), Santiago de Chile, Chile and University of Grenoble Alpes [Université Grenoble Alpes] (FR), CNRS, Grenoble, France [UGA]), Jaehan Bae (Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science (US), Washington DC, USA), Stefano Facchini (European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany), Miriam Keppler (MPG Institute for Astronomy [MPG Institut für Astronomie](DE), Heidelberg, Germany [MPIA]), Richard Teague (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA [CfA]), Andrea Isella (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University (US), Houston, TX, USA), Nicolas T. Kurtovic (MPIA), Laura M. Perez (Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile [UCHILE]), Anibal Sierra (UCHILE), Sean M. Andrews (CfA), John Carpenter (Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago de Chile, Chile), Ian Czekala (Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University (US), PA, USA, Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, Davey Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA, Center for Astrostatistics, Davey Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA and Institute for Computational & Data Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA), Carsten Dominik (Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam [Universiteit van Amsterdam] (NL), The Netherlands), Thomas Henning (MPIA), Francois Menard (UGA), Paola Pinilla (MPIA and Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London (UK), Holmbury St Mary, Dorking, UK) and Alice Zurlo (Núcleo de Astronomía, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Diego Portales University [Universidad Diego Portales] (CL), Santiago de Chile, Chile and Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile, Chile).

See the full article here.

See the full ESO blog post here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) (CL) , an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) (EU), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) (CA) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan.

ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

ALMA is a time machine!

ALMA-In Search of our Cosmic Origins

From European Southern Observatory (EU) (CL) : “Astronomers make first clear detection of a moon-forming disc around an exoplanet”

From European Southern Observatory (EU) (CL)

22 July 2021

Myriam Benisty
University of Chile [Universidad de Chile] (CL) and University of Grenoble Alpes [Université Grenoble Alpes] (FR)
Santiago de Chile, Chile
myriam.benisty@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

Jaehan Bae
Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science (US)
Washington DC, USA
Email: jbae@carnegiescience.edu

Stefano Facchini
European Southern Observatory
Garching bei München, Germany
Email: stefano.facchini@eso.org

Miriam Keppler
MPG Institute for Astronomy [MPG Institut für Astronomie](DE)
Heidelberg, Germany
Email: keppler@mpia.de

Richard Teague
Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (US)
Cambridge, MA, USA
Email: richard.d.teague@cfa.harvard.edu

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Media Manager
Garching bei München, Germany
Cell: +49 151 241 664 00
Email: press@eso.org

Wide and close-up views of a moon-forming disc as seen with ALMA.
Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA) [below], in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, astronomers have unambiguously detected the presence of a disc around a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. The observations will shed new light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.

“Our work presents a clear detection of a disc in which satellites could be forming,” says Myriam Benisty, a researcher at the University of Grenoble Alpes [Université Grenoble Alpes] (FR), and at the University of Chile [Universidad de Chile] (CL), who led the new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Our ALMA observations were obtained at such exquisite resolution that we could clearly identify that the disc is associated with the planet and we are able to constrain its size for the first time,” she adds.

The disc in question, called a circumplanetary disc, surrounds the exoplanet PDS 70c, one of two giant, Jupiter-like planets orbiting a star nearly 400 light-years away. Astronomers had found hints of a “moon-forming” disc around this exoplanet before but, since they could not clearly tell the disc apart from its surrounding environment, they could not confirm its detection — until now.

In addition, with the help of ALMA, Benisty and her team found that the disc has about the same diameter as the distance from our Sun to the Earth and enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon.

But the results are not only key to finding out how moons arise. “These new observations are also extremely important to prove theories of planet formation that could not be tested until now,” says Jaehan Bae, a researcher from the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science (US), and author on the study.

Planets form in dusty discs around young stars, carving out cavities as they gobble up material from this circumstellar disc to grow. In this process, a planet can acquire its own circumplanetary disc, which contributes to the growth of the planet by regulating the amount of material falling onto it. At the same time, the gas and dust in the circumplanetary disc can come together into progressively larger bodies through multiple collisions, ultimately leading to the birth of moons.

But astronomers do not yet fully understand the details of these processes. “In short, it is still unclear when, where, and how planets and moons form,” explains ESO Research Fellow Stefano Facchini, also involved in the research.

“More than 4000 exoplanets have been found until now, but all of them were detected in mature systems. PDS 70b and PDS 70c, which form a system reminiscent of the Jupiter-Saturn pair, are the only two exoplanets detected so far that are still in the process of being formed,” explains Miriam Keppler, researcher at the MPG Institute for Astronomy [MPG Institut für Astronomie](DE) and one of the co-authors of the study [1].

“This system therefore offers us a unique opportunity to observe and study the processes of planet and satellite formation,” Facchini adds.

PDS 70b and PDS 70c, the two planets making up the system, were first discovered using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) [below] in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and their unique nature means they have been observed with other telescopes and instruments many times since [2].

The latest high resolution ALMA observations have now allowed astronomers to gain further insights into the system. In addition to confirming the detection of the circumplanetary disc around PDS 70c and studying its size and mass, they found that PDS 70b does not show clear evidence of such a disc, indicating that it was starved of dust material from its birth environment by PDS 70c.

An even deeper understanding of the planetary system will be achieved with ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) [below], currently under construction on Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama desert. “The ELT will be key for this research since, with its much higher resolution, we will be able to map the system in great detail,” says co-author Richard Teague, a researcher at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (US). In particular, by using the ELT’s Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS), the team will be able to look at the gas motions surrounding PDS 70c to get a full 3D picture of the system.

Notes

[1] Despite the similarity with the Jupiter-Saturn pair, note that the disc around PDS 70c is about 500 times larger than Saturn’s rings.

[2] PDS 70b was discovered using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument, while PDS 70c was found using the VLT’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE). The two-planet system has been investigated using the X-shooter instrument too, also installed on ESO’s VLT.

European Southern Observatory(EU) SPHERE extreme adaptive optics system and coronagraphic facility on the VLT UT3, Cerro Paranal, Chile, with an elevation of 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

European Southern Observatory(EU) MUSE on Yepun (UT4) on the Very Large Telescope, Cerro Paranal (CL)

ESO X-shooter on VLT on UT2 at Cerro Paranal, Chile.

More information

This research was presented in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The team is composed of Myriam Benisty (Joint Franco-Chilean International Astronomy Unit [Unidad Mixta franco chilena de astronomía], National Centre for Scientific Research [Centre national de la recherche scientifique, [CNRS] (FR), Departamento de Astronomía, University of Chile [Universidad de Chile] (CL), Santiago de Chile, Chile and University of Grenoble Alpes [Université Grenoble Alpes] (FR), CNRS, Grenoble, France [UGA]), Jaehan Bae (Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science (US), Washington DC, USA), Stefano Facchini (European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany), Miriam Keppler (MPG Institute for Astronomy [MPG Institut für Astronomie](DE), Heidelberg, Germany [MPIA]), Richard Teague (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA [CfA]), Andrea Isella (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University (US), Houston, TX, USA), Nicolas T. Kurtovic (MPIA), Laura M. Perez (Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile [UCHILE]), Anibal Sierra (UCHILE), Sean M. Andrews (CfA), John Carpenter (Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago de Chile, Chile), Ian Czekala (Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University (US), PA, USA, Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, Davey Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA, Center for Astrostatistics, Davey Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA and Institute for Computational & Data Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA), Carsten Dominik (Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam [Universiteit van Amsterdam] (NL), The Netherlands), Thomas Henning (MPIA), Francois Menard (UGA), Paola Pinilla (MPIA and Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London (UK), Holmbury St Mary, Dorking, UK) and Alice Zurlo (Núcleo de Astronomía, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Diego Portales University [Universidad Diego Portales] (CL), Santiago de Chile, Chile and Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile, Chile).

See the full article here .
See the full ALMA blog post here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Visit ESO (EU) in Social Media-

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

European Southern Observatory (EU)(CL) is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre EEuropean Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

European Southern Observatory(EU)La Silla Observatory 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

ESO New Technology Telescope at Cerro La Silla , Chile, at an altitude of 2400 metres.

European Southern Observatory(EU) , Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert •ANTU (UT1; The Sun ) •KUEYEN (UT2; The Moon ) •MELIPAL (UT3; The Southern Cross ), and •YEPUN (UT4; Venus – as evening star). Elevation 2,635 m (8,645 ft) from above Credit J.L. Dauvergne & G. Hüdepohl atacama photo.

Glistening against the awesome backdrop of the night sky aboveESO’s Paranal Observatory, four laser beams project out into the darkness from Unit Telescope 4 UT4 of the VLT, a major asset of the Adaptive Optics system.

European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU)/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

European Southern Observatory(EU) ELT 39 meter telescope to be on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. located at the summit of the mountain at an altitude of 3,060 metres (10,040 ft).

European Southern Observatory(EU) MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) ESO’s Atacama Pathfinder Experiment(CL) high on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama region, at an altitude of over 4,800 m (15,700 ft).

A novel gamma ray telescope under construction on Mount Hopkins, Arizona. A large project known as the Čerenkov Telescope Array composed of hundreds of similar telescopes to be situated in the Canary Islands and Chile at ESO Cerro Paranal site. The telescope on Mount Hopkins will be fitted with a prototype high-speed camera, assembled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and capable of taking pictures at a billion frames per second. Credit: Vladimir Vassiliev.

From ALMA(CL): “EHT pinpoints dark heart of the nearest radio galaxy”

European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU)/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

From ALMA(CL)

Valeria Foncea
Education and Public Outreach Officer
Joint ALMA Observatory Santiago – Chile
Phone: +56 2 2467 6258
Cell phone: +56 9 7587 1963
Email: valeria.foncea@alma.cl

Masaaki Hiramatsu
Education and Public Outreach Officer, NAOJ Chile
Observatory
, Tokyo – Japan
Phone: +81 422 34 3630
Email: hiramatsu.masaaki@nao.ac.jp

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Phone: +49 89 3200 6670
Email: pio@eso.org

Amy C. Oliver
Public Information & News Manager
National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), USA
Phone: +1 434 242 9584
Email: aoliver@nrao.edu

All general references:
ALMA Observatory (CL)
European Southern Observatory(EU)
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP)
National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)

An international team anchored by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which is known for capturing the first image of a black hole in the galaxy Messier 87, has now imaged the heart of the nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A in unprecedented detail. The astronomers pinpoint the location of the central supermassive black hole and reveal how a gigantic jet is being born. Most remarkably, only the outer edges of the jet seem to emit radiation, which challenges our theoretical models of jets. This work, led by Michael Janssen from the MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) in Bonn and Radboud University Nijmegen [Radboud Universiteit](NL) is published in Nature Astronomy on July 19th.

At radio wavelengths Centaurus A emerges as one of the largest and brightest objects in the night sky. After it was identified as one of the first known extragalactic radio sources in 1949, Centaurus A has been studied extensively across the entire electromagnetic spectrum by a variety of radio, infrared, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray observatories. At the center of Centaurus A lies a black hole with the mass of 55 million suns, which is right between the mass scales of the Messier 87 black hole (six and a half billion suns) and the one in the center of our own galaxy (about four million suns).

In a new paper in Nature Astronomy, data from the 2017 EHT observations have been analyzed to image Centaurus A in unprecedented detail. “This allows us for the first time to see and study an extragalactic radio jet on scales smaller than the distance light travels in one day. We see up close and personally how a monstrously gigantic jet launched by a supermassive black hole is being born”, says astronomer Michael Janssen.

Highest resolution image of Centaurus A obtained with the Event Horizon Telescope on top of a color composite image of the entire galaxy. Credit: Radboud University; European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU) (CL)/WFI; MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) A. Weiss et al./ESO/APEX/; National Aeronautics Space Agency (US)/Chandra X-ray Center (US)/ R. Kraft et al.Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (US)/; M. Janssen et al. EHT.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chandra X-ray telescope(US)

Wide Field Imager on the 2.2 meter MPG/ESO telescope at Cerro LaSilla (CL)

MPG Institute for Astronomy [Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie](DE)European Southern Observatory(EU)2.2 meter telescope at Cerro La Silla, Chile, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

European Southern Observatory(EU) MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) ESO’s Atacama Pathfinder Experiment(CL) high on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama region, at an altitude of over 4,800 m (15,700 ft).

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Event Horizon Telescope Array

Arizona Radio Observatory

University of Arizona Radio Observatory(US) at NOAO Kitt Peak National Observatory(US), AZ USA, U Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory(US) at altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft).

ESO APEX
European Southern Observatory(EU) MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) ESO’s Atacama Pathfinder Experiment(CL) high on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama region, at an altitude of over 4,800 m (15,700 ft).

CARMA
Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy(US)), in the Inyo Mountains to the east of the California Institute of Technology Owens Valley Radio Observatory(US), at a site called Cedar Flat, Altitude 1,222 m (4,009 ft), relocated to Owens Valley Radio Observatory, Altitude 1,222 m (4,009 ft).

NAOJ Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE)

NAOJ Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) deployed to its site on Pampa La Bola, near Cerro Chajnantor and the Llano de Chajnantor, Observatory in northern Chile, Altitude 4,800 m (15,700 ft).

CfA Submillimeter Observatory

CFA Harvard Smithsonian Submillimeter Array on MaunaKea, Hawaii, USA, Altitude 4,205 m (13,796 ft).

Greenland Telescope

The Greenland Telescope is an international collaboration between: The Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics(project leaders); The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (US) The The National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US); and The Haystack Observatory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(US) at an altitude of 3,210 meters (10,530 feet).

(IRAM) 30m
Institute of Radio Astronomy [Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique](ES) 30m Radio telescope, on Pico Veleta in the Spanish Sierra Nevada, Altitude 2,850 m (9,350 ft).

IRAM NOEMA, France

IRAM-Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique (FR) NOEMA Interferometer in the French Alps on the wide and isolated Plateau de Bure at an elevation of 2550 meters, the telescope currently consists of ten antennas, each 15 meters in diameter interferometer Located in the French Alpes on the wide and isolated Plateau de Bure at an elevation of 2550 meters.

James Clerk Maxwell Telescope

East Asian Observatory James Clerk Maxwell Telescope MaunaKea Hawai’i(US)altitude 4207 m (13802 ft) above sea level.

Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano

The University of Massachusetts Amherst and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica MX Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, Mexico, at an altitude of 4850 meters on top of the Sierra Negra.

ESO/NRAO/NAOJ ALMA Array.
European Southern Observatory/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.[/caption]

South Pole Telescope

South Pole Telescope SPTPOL. The SPT collaboration is made up of over a dozen (mostly North American) institutions, including The University of Chicago (US); The University of California Berkeley (US); Case Western Reserve University (US); Harvard/Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (US); The University of Colorado-Boulder (US); McGill University(CA); The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (US); The University of California-Davis (US); Ludwig Maximilians Universität München(DE); DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory (US); and The National Institute for Standards and Technology (US). It is funded by the National Science Foundation(US)

Future Array/Telescopes

California Institute of Technology Owens Valley Radio Observatory(US), located near Big Pine, California (US) in Owens Valley, Altitude1,222 m (4,009 ft).

Caltech Owens Valley Radio Observatory.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Compared to all previous high-resolution observations, the jet launched in Centaurus A is imaged at a tenfold higher frequency and sixteen times sharper resolution. With the resolving power of the EHT, we can now link the vast scales of the source, which are as big as 16 times the angular diameter of the Moon on the sky, to their origin near the black hole in a region of merely the width of an apple on the Moon when projected on the sky. That is a magnification factor of one billion.

Understanding jets

Supermassive black holes residing in the center of galaxies like Centaurus A are feeding off gas and dust that is attracted by their enormous gravitational pull. This process releases massive amounts of energy and the galaxy is said to become ‘active’. Most matter lying close to the edge of the black hole falls in. However, some of the surrounding particles escape moments before capture and are blown far out into space: Jets – one of the most mysterious and energetic features of galaxies – are born.

Astronomers have relied on different models of how matter behaves near the black hole to better understand this process. But they still do not know exactly how jets are launched from its central region and how they can extend over scales that are larger than their host galaxies without dispersing out. The EHT aims to resolve this mystery.

The new image shows that the jet launched by Centaurus A is brighter at the edges compared to the center. This phenomenon is known from other jets, but has never been seen so pronouncedly before. “Now we are able to rule out theoretical jet models that are unable to reproduce this edge-brightening. It’s a striking feature that will help us better understand jets produced by black holes”, says Matthias Kadler, TANAMI leader and professor for astrophysics at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg [Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg] (DE) in Germany.

Future observations

With the new EHT observations of the Centaurus A jet, the likely location of the black hole has been identified at the launching point of the jet. Based on this location, the researchers predict that future observations at an even shorter wavelength and higher resolution would be able to photograph the central black hole of Centaurus A. This will require the use of space-based satellite observatories.

“These data are from the same observing campaign that delivered the famous image of the black hole in M87. The new results show that the EHT provides a treasure trove of data on the rich variety of black holes and there is still more to come”, says Heino Falcke, EHT board member and professor for Astrophysics at Radboud University.

Additional Information

To observe the Centaurus A galaxy with this unprecedentedly sharp resolution at a wavelength of 1.3 mm, the EHT collaboration used Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), the same technique with which the famous image of the black hole in M87 was made.

European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network

An alliance of eight telescopes around the world, of which ALMA is the most sensitive element, joined together to create the virtual Earth-sized Event Horizon Telescope. The EHT collaboration involves more than 300 researchers from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America.

The EHT consortium consists of 13 stakeholder institutes: the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the University of Arizona (US), the University of Chicago (US), the East Asian Observatory, Goethe University [Goethe-Universität] Frankfurt(DE), Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (MPG/CNRS/IGN), Large Millimeter Telescope, MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE), MIT Haystack Observatory (US), National Astronomical Observatory of Japan [国立天文台](JP), Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (CA), Radboud University Nijmegen [Radboud Universiteit](NL) and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (US).

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) (CL) , an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) (EU), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) (CA) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan.

ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (US) (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

ALMA is a time machine!

ALMA-In Search of our Cosmic Origins

From Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) (NL) : “Ultra-sensitive radio images reveal thousands of star-forming galaxies in early Universe”

From Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) (NL)

7 April 2021 [Just now in social media.]

Deep Lofar image of Elais N-1

An international team of astronomers has published the most sensitive images of the Universe ever taken at low radio frequencies, using the International Low Frequency Array (LOFAR). By observing the same regions of sky over and over again and combining the data to make a single very-long exposure image, the team has detected the faint radio glow of stars exploding as supernovae, in tens of thousands of galaxies out to the most distant parts of the Universe. A special issue of the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics is dedicated to fourteen research papers [all here] describing these images and the first scientific results.

Cosmic star formation

Philip Best, University of Edinburgh (SCT), who led the deep survey, explained: “When we look at the sky with a radio telescope, the brightest objects we see are produced by massive black holes at the centre of galaxies. However, our images are so deep that most of the objects in it are galaxies like our own Milky Way, which emit faint radio waves that trace their on-going star-formation.”

“The combination of the high sensitivity of LOFAR and the wide area of sky covered by our survey – about 300 times the size of the full moon – has enabled us to detect tens of thousands of galaxies like the Milky Way, far out into the distant Universe. The light from these galaxies has been travelling for billions of years to reach the Earth; this means that we see the galaxies as they were billions of years ago, back when they were forming most of their stars.”

Isabella Prandoni, Institute for Radio Astronomy of Bologna [Istituto di Radioastronomia di Bologna] (IT), added: “Star formation is usually enshrouded in dust, which obscures our view when we look with optical telescopes. But radio waves penetrate the dust, so with LOFAR we obtain a complete picture of their star-formation.” The deep LOFAR images have led to a new relation between a galaxy’s radio emission and the rate at which it is forming stars, and a more accurate measurement of the number of new stars being formed in the young Universe.

Exotic objects

The remarkable dataset has enabled a wide range of additional scientific studies, ranging from the nature of the spectacular jets of radio emission produced by massive black holes, to that arising from collisions of huge clusters of galaxies. It has also thrown up unexpected results. For example, by comparing the repeated observations, the researchers searched for objects that change in radio brightness. This resulted in the detection of the red dwarf star CR Draconis. Joe Callingham, Leiden University [Universiteit Leiden] (NL) and ASTRON (NL), noted that “CR Draconis shows bursts of radio emission that strongly resemble those from Jupiter, and may be driven by the interaction of the star with a previously unknown planet, or because the star is rotating extremely quickly.”

Huge computational challenge

LOFAR does not directly produce maps of the sky; instead the signals from more than 70,000 antennas must be combined. To produce these deep pictures, more than 4 petabytes of raw data – equivalent to about a million DVDs – were taken and processed. “The deep radio images of our Universe are diffusely hidden, deep inside the vast amount of data that LOFAR has observed.” said Cyril Tasse from Paris Observatory [Observatoire de Paris – PSL Centre de recherche en astronomie et astrophysique] (FR). “Recent mathematical advances made it possible to extract these, using large clusters of computers.”

Lockman Hole at 6″ with LOFAR.
A video fly-through of part of the sky that was studied (Credit: Jurjen de Jong, Leiden University).

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

ASTRON is the ASTRON-Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy [Nederlands Instituut voor Radioastronomie] (NL). Its main office is in Dwingeloo in the Dwingelderveld National Park in the province of Drenthe. ASTRON is part of Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

ASTRON’s main mission is to make discoveries in radio astronomy happen, via the development of new and innovative technologies, the operation of world-class radio astronomy facilities, and the pursuit of fundamental astronomical research. Engineers and astronomers at ASTRON have an outstanding international reputation for novel technology development, and fundamental research in galactic and extra-galactic astronomy. Its main funding comes from NWO.

ASTRON’s programme has three principal elements:

The operation of front line observing facilities, including especially the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope and LOFAR,
The pursuit of fundamental astronomical research using ASTRON facilities, together with a broad range of other telescopes around the world and space-borne instruments (e.g. Sptizer, HST etc.)
A strong technology development programme, encompassing both innovative instrumentation for existing telescopes and the new technologies needed for future facilities.

In addition, ASTRON is active in the international science policy arena and is one of the leaders in the international SKA project. The Square Kilometre Array will be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope with a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometre. The SKA will be built in Southern Africa and in Australia. It is a global enterprise bringing together 11 countries from the 5 continents.

Radio telescopes

ASTRON operates the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), one of the largest radio telescopes in the world. The WSRT and the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) are dedicated to explore the universe at radio frequencies ranging from 10 MHz to 8 GHz.

Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, an aperture synthesis interferometer near World War II Nazi detention and transit camp Westerbork, north of the village of Westerbork, Midden-Drenthe, in the northeastern Netherlands.

In addition to its use as a stand-alone radio telescope, the Westerbork array participates in the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (EVN) of radio telescopes.

ASTRON is the host institute for the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE).

European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network

Its primary task is to operate the EVN MkIV VLBI Data Processor (correlator). JIVE also provides a high-level of support to astronomers and the Telescope Network. ASTRON also hosts the NOVA Optical/ Infrared instrumentation group.

LOFAR is a radio telescope composed of an international network of antenna stations and is designed to observe the universe at frequencies between 10 and 250 MHz. Operated by ASTRON (NL), the network includes stations in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, the U.K., France, Poland and Ireland.

ASTRON Institute for Radio Astronomy(NL) LOFAR Radio Antenna Bank(NL)

From Sky & Telescope : “Gravitationally Unstable Disk May Collapse to Form Planets”

From Sky & Telescope

July 16, 2021
Lauren Sgro

Astronomers investigate the spiral arms of a young star’s disk and find evidence of a disk so massive that it could collapse to form planets.

The protoplanetary disk of Elias 2-27, shown with the dust continuum data in blue, along with different forms of carbon monoxide shown in yellow and red. The top panel shows the dust in blue along with gas probed at different velocities. Each image shows all the gas that travels at the specific velocity measured. The bottom panel is a composite of all dust and gas observed. Credit: ALMA (European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU) (CL)/National Astronomy Observatory of Japan (JP)/B. Saxton National Radio Astronomy Observatory (US))/T. Paneque-Carreño (University of Chile [Universidad de Chile] (CL)).

Astronomers have found the first signposts of a gravitationally unstable disk around the young star Elias 2-27 — the first evidence to support this method of giant planet formation.

Protoplanetary disks of gas and dust leftover from stellar formation are known as the birthplace of planets. Astronomers understand that these disks give way to planets, but they’re still working to determine the exact evolution from dust to new worlds.

There’s more than one way to form a planet, and one path might be gravitational instability – when disks become so massive that they begin to fragment and cave in on themselves, directly collapsing into planets or forming spiral arms that trap material for future planet formation. An already-formed giant planet or interactions with a nearby star can also create spirals, but spiral structure born out of gravitational instability carries special characteristics.

A team led by Cassandra Hall (University of Georgia (US)) was the first to predict what the markers of gravitational instability might look like. Hall and collaborators used simulations to determine the telltale sign of gravitational instability in a disk, affectionately dubbed the “wiggle.” This wiggle disturbs the disk’s rotation on scales coinciding with the spirals, instead of in one specific location like the swirling kinks caused by planets.

In 2016, scientists at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) first saw spiral arms in the disk of Elias 2-27.

European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU)/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

Now, research led by Teresa Paneque-Carreño (now at Leiden University [Universiteit Leiden] (NL)), has spotted the hallmark wiggle. The finding makes these spiral arms the first convincing evidence for a gravitationally unstable disk. This study will appear in The Astrophysical Journal.

Evidence for Instability

With Hall’s predictions in mind, Paneque-Carreño’s collaboration used ALMA to observe the dust and gas in Elias 2-27’s disk. The results show that the expansive spiral arms are symmetric, with similar shapes and sizes, as predicted if gravitational instability were at work.

The key piece of evidence for instability, however, is the wiggle. The team used ALMA to observe the motions of carbon monoxide – which traces the harder-to-observe, but more abundant, hydrogen gas – and discovered the sought-after signature. As predicted, this disturbance coincides with the spiral arms in most observations. “It is really amazing to see this confirmation of velocity perturbations that so closely resembles what was predicted,” Hall says, who also worked on the Elias 2-27 studies.

Components of Elias 2-27’s disk, with images of the dust (blue) and carbon monoxide gas (C18O in yellow, 13CO in red) cycled through.
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/T. Paneque-Carreño (Universidad de Chile), B. Saxton (NRAO).

These signals of gravitational instability also led to the first direct measurement of the mass in a planet-forming disk. Using the ALMA data, collaborator Benedetta Veronesi (University of Milan [Università degli Studi di Milano Statale] (IT)) reported the mass in a companion study that will appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Veronesi’s team concluded that Elias 2-27’s disk has 17% the mass of its star, creating conditions ripe for gravitational instabilities. In thinner disks, the star calls the shots with its powerful gravity governing the motions of the disk. But for a massive disk like the one around Elias 2-27, the disk’s own gravity starts to influence its dynamics, which enabled Veronesi’s team to determine its mass budget for future planet formation.

Oddities of Elias 2-27

While the spiral, wiggle, and mass all indicate the disk is experiencing gravitational instability, gaps in that same disk are throwing astronomers for a loop. For instance, there is a gap in the middle of the disk that is devoid of dust – a trait typically attributed to the commotion of a forming planet. However, a planet forming a gap of this size wouldn’t be large enough to form the spiral structure. Even if there were a planet at this location, it would get sucked into the star. On the other hand, gravitational instability cannot explain the gap, even though it explains the spirals.

While neither phenomenon can explain both features, the evidence for gravitational instability is still valid, says Ken Rice (University of Edinburgh (SCT)), who was not involved in the study. “I don’t think the presence of a gap necessarily suggests that spirals aren’t being driven by the gravitational instability.”

This illustration shows how the spiral arms caused by gravitational instability can help dust grains accumulate, which may move on to form planetary systems.
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/T. Paneque-Carreño (Universidad de Chile), B. Saxton (NRAO).

Paneque-Carreño’s team also finds that the gas in Elias 2-27’s disk is unexpectedly asymmetric, such that the gas is thicker on one side of the disk than the other. The varying layers of gas indicate that material could still be falling onto the disk from the cloud that formed the Elias 2-27 system. This inbound gas might have ignited the gravitational instability and even caused a disk warp that morphed into the currently observed dust gap.

Although more observations are needed to solve the conundrums of Elias 2-27’s disk, the evidence for a massive, gravitationally unstable disk is quite compelling, says Rice.

Astronomers still need to work out how gravitational instability leads to planets — via direct collapse or indirectly, inciting spiral structures that help funnel material. Elias 2-27 and others like it will help astronomers piece together the planet formation puzzle.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Sky & Telescope, founded in 1941 by Charles A. Federer Jr. and Helen Spence Federer, has the largest, most experienced staff of any astronomy magazine in the world. Its editors are virtually all amateur or professional astronomers, and every one has built a telescope, written a book, done original research, developed a new product, or otherwise distinguished him or herself.

Sky & Telescope magazine, now in its eighth decade, came about because of some happy accidents. Its earliest known ancestor was a four-page bulletin called The Amateur Astronomer, which was begun in 1929 by the Amateur Astronomers Association in New York City. Then, in 1935, the American Museum of Natural History opened its Hayden Planetarium and began to issue a monthly bulletin that became a full-size magazine called The Sky within a year. Under the editorship of Hans Christian Adamson, The Sky featured large illustrations and articles from astronomers all over the globe. It immediately absorbed The Amateur Astronomer.

Despite initial success, by 1939 the planetarium found itself unable to continue financial support of The Sky. Charles A. Federer, who would become the dominant force behind Sky & Telescope, was then working as a lecturer at the planetarium. He was asked to take over publishing The Sky. Federer agreed and started an independent publishing corporation in New York.

“Our first issue came out in January 1940,” he noted. “We dropped from 32 to 24 pages, used cheaper quality paper…but editorially we further defined the departments and tried to squeeze as much information as possible between the covers.” Federer was The Sky’s editor, and his wife, Helen, served as managing editor. In that January 1940 issue, they stated their goal: “We shall try to make the magazine meet the needs of amateur astronomy, so that amateur astronomers will come to regard it as essential to their pursuit, and professionals to consider it a worthwhile medium in which to bring their work before the public.”

From European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU) and From ALMA [The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array] (CL) : “Galactic fireworks- new ESO images reveal stunning features of nearby galaxies”

From European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU)

and

European Southern Observatory/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

From ALMA [The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array] (CL)

16 July 2021

Eric Emsellem
European Southern Observatory
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6914
Email: eric.emsellem@eso.org

Eva Schinnerer
MPG Institute for Astronomy [MPG Institut für Astronomie](DE)
Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 6221 528 294
Email: schinner@mpia.de

Kathryn Kreckel
Centre for Astronomy of Heidelberg University [Astronomisches Rechen-Institut: Zentrum für Astronomie] (DE)
Heidelberg, Germany
Email: kathryn.kreckel@uni-heidelberg.de

Francesco Belfiore
INAF – Arcetri Observatory [Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory Florence] (IT), Italy
Email: francesco.belfiore@inaf.it

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Media Manager
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6670
Cell: +49 151 241 664 00
Email: press@eso.org

A team of astronomers has released new observations of nearby galaxies that resemble colourful cosmic fireworks. The images, obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) [below], show different components of the galaxies in distinct colours, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the locations of young stars and the gas they warm up around them. By combining these new observations with data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) [below], in which ESO is a partner, the team is helping shed new light on what triggers gas to form stars.

NGC 4303 as seen with MUSE on ESO’s VLT at several wavelengths of light.
This image, taken by the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the nearby galaxy NGC 4303. NGC 4303 is a spiral galaxy, with a bar of stars and gas at its centre, located approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The image is an overlay of observations conducted at different wavelengths of light to map stellar populations and warm gas. The golden glows mainly correspond to clouds of ionised hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur gas, marking the presence of newly born stars, while the bluish regions in the background reveal the distribution of slightly older stars.

The image was taken as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) project, which is making high-resolution observations of nearby galaxies with telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum. Credit: ESO/PHANGS.

European Southern Observatory(EU) MUSE on Yepun (UT4) on the Very Large Telescope, Cerro Paranal (CL)

NGC 4254 as seen with MUSE on ESO’s VLT at several wavelengths of light.
This image, taken with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the nearby galaxy NGC 4254. NGC 4254 is a grand-design spiral galaxy located approximately 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. The image is a combination of observations conducted at different wavelengths of light to map stellar populations and warm gas. The golden glows mainly correspond to clouds of ionised hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur gas, marking the presence of newly born stars, while the bluish regions in the background reveal the distribution of slightly older stars.

The image was taken as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) project, which is making high-resolution observations of nearby galaxies with telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum. Credit: ESO/PHANGS.

See the full article for more individual images.

Astronomers know that stars are born in clouds of gas, but what sets off star formation, and how galaxies as a whole play into it, remains a mystery. To understand this process, a team of researchers has observed various nearby galaxies with powerful telescopes on the ground and in space, scanning the different galactic regions involved in stellar births.

“For the first time we are resolving individual units of star formation over a wide range of locations and environments in a sample that well represents the different types of galaxies,” says Eric Emsellem, an astronomer at ESO in Germany and lead of the VLT-based observations conducted as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) project. “We can directly observe the gas that gives birth to stars, we see the young stars themselves, and we witness their evolution through various phases.”

Emsellem, who is also affiliated with the U Claude Lyon 1 [Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1] (FR), and his team have now released their latest set of galactic scans, taken with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s VLT in the Atacama Desert in Chile. They used MUSE to trace newborn stars and the warm gas around them, which is illuminated and heated up by the stars and acts as a smoking gun of ongoing star formation.

The new MUSE images are now being combined with observations of the same galaxies taken with ALMA and released earlier this year. ALMA, which is also located in Chile, is especially well suited to mapping cold gas clouds — the parts of galaxies that provide the raw material out of which stars form.

By combining MUSE and ALMA images astronomers can examine the galactic regions where star formation is happening, compared to where it is expected to happen, so as to better understand what triggers, boosts or holds back the birth of new stars. The resulting images are stunning, offering a spectacularly colourful insight into stellar nurseries in our neighbouring galaxies.

“There are many mysteries we want to unravel,” says Kathryn Kreckel from the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg [Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg](DE) and PHANGS team member. “Are stars more often born in specific regions of their host galaxies — and, if so, why? And after stars are born how does their evolution influence the formation of new generations of stars?”

Astronomers will now be able to answer these questions thanks to the wealth of MUSE and ALMA data the PHANGS team have obtained. MUSE collects spectra — the “bar codes” astronomers scan to unveil the properties and nature of cosmic objects — at every single location within its field of view, thus providing much richer information than traditional instruments. For the PHANGS project, MUSE observed 30 000 nebulae of warm gas and collected about 15 million spectra of different galactic regions. The ALMA observations, on the other hand, allowed astronomers to map around 100 000 cold-gas regions across 90 nearby galaxies, producing an unprecedentedly sharp atlas of stellar nurseries in the close Universe.

In addition to ALMA and MUSE, the PHANGS project also features observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration(US)/European Space Agency [Agence spatiale européenne] [Europäische Weltraumorganisation] (EU) Hubble Space Telescope

The various observatories were selected to allow the team to scan our galactic neighbours at different wavelengths (visible, near-infrared and radio), with each wavelength range unveiling distinct parts of the observed galaxies. “Their combination allows us to probe the various stages of stellar birth — from the formation of the stellar nurseries to the onset of star formation itself and the final destruction of the nurseries by the newly born stars — in more detail than is possible with individual observations,” says PHANGS team member Francesco Belfiore from INAF-Arcetri in Florence, Italy. “PHANGS is the first time we have been able to assemble such a complete view, taking images sharp enough to see the individual clouds, stars, and nebulae that signify forming stars.”

The work carried out by the PHANGS project will be further honed by upcoming telescopes and instruments, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

National Aeronautics Space Agency(USA)/European Space Agency [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU)/ Canadian Space Agency [Agence Spatiale Canadienne](CA) Webb Infrared Space Telescope(US) James Webb Space Telescope annotated. Scheduled for launch in October 2021.

The data obtained in this way will lay further groundwork for observations with ESO’s future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) [below], which will start operating later this decade and will enable an even more detailed look at the structures of stellar nurseries.

“As amazing as PHANGS is, the resolution of the maps that we produce is just sufficient to identify and separate individual star-forming clouds, but not good enough to see what’s happening inside them in detail,” pointed out Eva Schinnerer, a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and principal investigator of the PHANGS project, under which the new observations were conducted. “New observational efforts by our team and others are pushing the boundary in this direction, so we have decades of exciting discoveries ahead of us.”

More information

The international PHANGS team is composed of over 90 scientists ranging from Master students to retirees working at 30 institutions across four continents. The MUSE data reduction working group within PHANGS is being led by Eric Emsellem (European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany and Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, Université de Lyon, ENS de Lyon, Saint-Genis Laval, France) and includes Francesco Belfiore (INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Florence, Italy), Guillermo Blanc, Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena, US), Enrico Congiu (Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile and Las Campanas Observatory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Atacama Region, Chile), Brent Groves (The University of Western Australia (AU), Perth, Australia), I-Ting Ho (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany [MPIA]), Kathryn Kreckel (Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany), Rebecca McElroy (Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA) (AU), Sydney, Australia), Ismael Pessa (MPIA), Patricia Sanchez-Blazquez (Complutense University of Madrid[Universidad Complutense Madrid] Institute of Particle and Cosmos Physics [Instituto de Física de Partículas y Cosmos] (ES), Madrid, Spain), Francesco Santoro (MPIA), Fabian Scheuermann (Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany) and Eva Schinnerer (MPIA).

Go to the ESO public image archive to see a sample of PHANGS images.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Visit ESO (EU) in Social Media-

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

Nicolás Lira
Education and Public Outreach Coordinator
Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago – Chile
Phone: +56 2 2467 6519
Cell phone: +56 9 9445 7726
Email: nicolas.lira@alma.cl

Valeria Foncea
Education and Public Outreach Officer
Joint ALMA Observatory Santiago – Chile
Phone: +56 2 2467 6258
Cell phone: +56 9 7587 1963
Email: valeria.foncea@alma.cl

Masaaki Hiramatsu
Education and Public Outreach Officer, NAOJ Chile
Observatory
, Tokyo – Japan
Phone: +81 422 34 3630
Email: hiramatsu.masaaki@nao.ac.jp

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Phone: +49 89 3200 6670
Email: pio@eso.org

Amy C. Oliver
Public Information & News Manager
National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), USA
Phone: +1 434 242 9584
Email: aoliver@nrao.edu

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) (CL), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan.

ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

ALMA is a time machine!

ALMA-In Search of our Cosmic Origins

European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU) is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

European Southern Observatory(EU) La Silla HELIOS (HARPS Experiment for Light Integrated Over the Sun)

ESO 3.6m telescope & HARPS atCerro LaSilla, Chile, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

MPG Institute for Astronomy [Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie](DE) 2.2 meter telescope at/European Southern Observatory(EU) Cerro La Silla, Chile, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

European Southern Observatory(EU)La Silla Observatory 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

European Southern Observatory(EU) , Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert •ANTU (UT1; The Sun ) •KUEYEN (UT2; The Moon ) •MELIPAL (UT3; The Southern Cross ), and •YEPUN (UT4; Venus – as evening star). Elevation 2,635 m (8,645 ft) from above Credit J.L. Dauvergne & G. Hüdepohl atacama photo. [/caption]

European Southern Observatory(EU) VLTI Interferometer image, Cerro Paranal, with an elevation of 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level, •ANTU (UT1; The Sun ),
•KUEYEN (UT2; The Moon ),
•MELIPAL (UT3; The Southern Cross ), and
•YEPUN (UT4; Venus – as evening star).

ESO Very Large Telescope 4 lasers on Yepun (CL)

Glistening against the awesome backdrop of the night sky above ESO’s Paranal Observatory, four laser beams project out into the darkness from Unit Telescope 4 UT4 of the VLT, a major asset of the Adaptive Optics system.

ESO/NTT NTT at Cerro La Silla , Chile, at an altitude of 2400 metres.

Part of ESO’s Paranal Observatory the VLT Survey Telescope (VISTA) observes the brilliantly clear skies above the Atacama Desert of Chile. It is the largest survey telescope in the world in visible light, with an elevation of 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

European Southern Observatory/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

European Southern Observatory(EU) ELT 39 meter telescope to be on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. located at the summit of the mountain at an altitude of 3,060 metres (10,040 ft).

European Southern Observatory(EU)/MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) ESO’s Atacama Pathfinder Experiment(CL) high on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama region, at an altitude of over 4,800 m (15,700 ft).

Leiden MASCARA instrument cabinet at Cerro La Silla, located in the southern Atacama Desert 600 kilometres (370 mi) north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2,400 metres (7,900 ft).

ESO Next Generation Transit Survey telescopes, an array of twelve robotic 20-centimetre telescopes at Cerro Paranal,(CL) 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

TAROT telescope at Cerro LaSilla, 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

European Southern Observatory(EU) ExTrA telescopes at erro LaSilla at an altitude of 2400 metres.

A novel gamma ray telescope under construction on Mount Hopkins, Arizona. A large project known as the Čerenkov Telescope Array composed of hundreds of similar telescopes to be situated in the Canary Islands and Chile at, ESO Cerro Paranal site The telescope on Mount Hopkins will be fitted with a prototype high-speed camera, assembled at the. University of Wisconsin–Madison and capable of taking pictures at a billion frames per second. Credit: Vladimir Vassiliev.

European Space Agency [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU), The new Test-Bed Telescope 2is housed inside the shiny white dome shown in this picture, at ESO’s LaSilla Facility in Chile. The telescope has now started operations and will assist its northern-hemisphere twin in protecting us from potentially hazardous, near-Earth objects.The domes of ESO’s 0.5 m and the Danish 0.5 m telescopes are visible in the background of this image.Part of the world-wide effort to scan and identify near-Earth objects, the European Space Agency’s Test-Bed Telescope 2 (TBT2), a technology demonstrator hosted at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, has now started operating. Working alongside its northern-hemisphere partner telescope, TBT2 will keep a close eye on the sky for asteroids that could pose a risk to Earth, testing hardware and software for a future telescope network.

European Space Agency [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU) The open dome of The black telescope structure of the‘s Test-Bed Telescope 2 peers out of its open dome in front of the rolling desert landscape. The telescope is located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, which sits at a 2400 metre altitude in the Chilean Atacama desert.

From Tata Institute of Fundamental Research [टाटा मूलभूत अनुसंधान संस्थान] (IN) via SciTechDaily : “Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope Measures the Atomic Hydrogen Gas Mass in Galaxies 9 Billion Years Ago”

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research IN

From Tata Institute of Fundamental Research [टाटा मूलभूत अनुसंधान संस्थान](IN)

via

SciTechDaily

July 12, 2021

The spectrum of the detected GMRT 21cm signal (left panel) and an image (right panel). Credit: Aditya Chowdhury.

A team of astronomers from the NCRA National Centre for Radio Astrophysics [राष्ट्रीय रेडियो खगोल भौतिकी केन्द्र] (IN) in Pune, and the Raman Research Institute [रमन अनुसंधान संस्थान] (IN), in Bangalore, has used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to measure the atomic hydrogen gas content of galaxies 9 billion years ago, in the young universe.

Upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, an array of thirty telecopes, located near Pune in India.

This is the earliest epoch in the universe for which there is a measurement of the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies.

The new result is a crucial confirmation of the group’s earlier result, where they had measured the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies 8 billion years ago [Nature], and pushes our understanding of galaxies to even earlier in the universe. The new research has been published in a recent issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Galaxies consist of mostly gas and stars, with new stars forming from the existing gas during the life of a galaxy. Stars formed much more frequently when the universe was young than they do today. Astronomers have known for more than two decades that the star formation activity in galaxies was at its highest about 8-10 billion years ago and has declined steadily thereafter.

Until recently, the cause of this decline was unknown, mostly because we have had no information about the amount of atomic hydrogen gas, the main fuel for star formation, in galaxies at these early times. This changed last year when a team of astronomers from NCRA and RRI, including some of the authors from the present study, used the upgraded GMRT to obtain the first measurement of the atomic hydrogen gas content of galaxies about 8 billion years ago, when the star-formation activity of the Universe began to decline. They found that the likely cause for the decline in star formation in galaxies is that galaxies were running out of fuel.

Aditya Chowdhury, a Ph.D. student at NCRA-TIFR, and the lead author of both the new study and the 2020 one, said, “Our new results are for galaxies at even earlier times, but still towards the end of the epoch of maximum star-formation activity. We find that galaxies 9 billion years ago were rich in atomic gas, with nearly three times as much mass in atomic gas as in stars! This is very different from galaxies today like the Milky Way, where the gas mass is nearly ten times smaller than the mass in stars.”

The measurement of the atomic hydrogen gas mass was done by using the GMRT to search for a spectral line in atomic hydrogen, which can only be detected with radio telescopes. Unfortunately, this “21 cm” signal is very weak, and hence nearly impossible to detect from individual galaxies at such large distances, around 30 billion light years from us, even with powerful telescopes like the GMRT. The team hence used a technique called “stacking” to improve the sensitivity. This allowed them to measure the average gas content of nearly 3,000 galaxies, by combining their 21 cm signals.

“The observations of our study were carried out around 5 years ago, before the GMRT was upgraded in 2018. We used the original receivers and electronics chain of the GMRT before its upgrade, which had a narrow bandwidth. We could hence cover only a limited number of galaxies; this is why our current study covers 3000 galaxies, compared to the 8,000 galaxies of our 2020 study with the wider bandwidth of the upgraded GMRT,” said Nissim Kanekar of NCRA-TIFR, a co-author of the study.

Barnali Das, another Ph.D. student of NCRA-TIFR, added, “Although we had fewer galaxies, we increased our sensitivity by observing for longer, with nearly 400 hours of observations. The large volume of data meant that the analysis took a long time!”

“The star formation in these early galaxies is so intense that they would consume their atomic gas in just two billion years. And, if the galaxies could not acquire more gas, their star formation activity would decline, and finally cease,” said Chowdhury. “It thus appears likely that the cause of the declining star-formation in the Universe is simply that galaxies were not able to replenish their gas reservoirs after some epoch, probably because there wasn’t enough gas available in their environments.”

“Reproducibility is foundational to science! Last year, we reported the first measurement of the atomic gas content in such distant galaxies. With the present result, using a completely different set of receivers and electronics, we now have two independent measurements of the atomic gas mass in these early galaxies. This would have been hard to believe, even a few years ago!” said Kanekar.

K. S. Dwarakanath of RRI, a co-author of the study, mentioned “Detecting the 21 cm signal from distant galaxies was the main original goal of the GMRT, and continues to be a key science driver for building even more powerful telescopes like the Square Kilometre Array. These results are extremely important for our understanding of galaxy evolution.”

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research IN campus

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research [टाटा मूलभूत अनुसंधान संस्थान](IN)

TIFR is a National Centre of the Government of India, under the umbrella of the Department of Atomic Energy, as well as a deemed University awarding degrees for master’s and doctoral programs. The Institute was founded in 1945 with support from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust under the vision of Dr. Homi Bhabha. At TIFR, we carry out basic research in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, computer science and science education. Our main campus is located in Mumbai, with centres at Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

From ALMA [The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array] (CL) : “New Radio Receiver Opens Wider Window to Radio Universe”

European Southern Observatory/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

From ALMA [The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array] (CL)

2021.07.08

Nicolás Lira
Education and Public Outreach Coordinator
Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago – Chile
Phone: +56 2 2467 6519
Cell phone: +56 9 9445 7726
Email: nicolas.lira@alma.cl

Valeria Foncea
Education and Public Outreach Officer
Joint ALMA Observatory Santiago – Chile
Phone: +56 2 2467 6258
Cell phone: +56 9 7587 1963
Email: valeria.foncea@alma.cl

Masaaki Hiramatsu
Education and Public Outreach Officer, NAOJ Chile
Observatory
, Tokyo – Japan
Phone: +81 422 34 3630
Email: hiramatsu.masaaki@nao.ac.jp

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Phone: +49 89 3200 6670
Email: pio@eso.org

Amy C. Oliver
Public Information & News Manager
National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), USA
Phone: +1 434 242 9584
Email: aoliver@nrao.edu

Researchers have used the latest wireless technology to develop a new radio receiver for astronomy. The receiver is capable of capturing radio waves at frequencies over a range several times wider than conventional ones, and can detect radio waves emitted by many types of molecules in space at once. This is expected to enable significant progresses in the study of the evolution of the Universe and the mechanisms of star and planet formation.

Interstellar molecular clouds of gas and dust provide the material for stars and planets. Each type of molecule emits radio waves at characteristic frequencies and astronomers have detected emissions from various molecules over a wide range of frequencies. By observing these radio waves, we can learn about the physical properties and chemical composition of interstellar molecular clouds. This has been the motivation driving the development of a wideband receiving system.

In general, the range of radio frequencies that can be observed simultaneously by a radio telescope is very limited. This is due to the characteristics of the components that make up a radio receiver. In this new research, the team of researchers in Osaka Prefecture University (JP) and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan has widened the bandwidth of various components, such as the horn that brings radio waves into the receiver, the waveguide (metal tube) circuit that propagates the radio waves, and the radio frequency converter. By combining these components into a receiver system, the team has achieved a range of simultaneously detectable frequencies several times larger than before. Furthermore, this receiver system was mounted on the OPU 1.85-m radio telescope in NAOJ’s Nobeyama Radio Observatory, and succeeded in capturing radio waves from actual celestial objects. This shows that the results of this research are extremely useful in actual astronomical observations.

Nobeyama Millimeter Array Radioheliograph, located near Minamimaki, Nagano at an elevation of 1350m

Newly developed radio receiving system. The radio waves collected by the antenna are directed to the receiver through the horn at the lower left of the photo and follow the path indicated by the arrow to be output.
Credit: Osaka Prefecture University.

Six radio emission lines from isotopologues of carbon monoxide observed simultaneously by the newly developed broadband receiver. The observed object is a region called “Orion KL” in the Orion Nebula. Credit: Osaka Prefecture University/NAOJ.

Distribution of CO isotopologues in the Orion molecular cloud observed simultaneously with the newly developed broadband receiver. The C^18 O (J=3-2) emission line was also observed, but is not shown because the radio signal strength was too weak to obtain an image.
Credit: Osaka Prefecture University/NAOJ

“It was a very emotional moment for me to share the joy of receiving radio waves from the Orion Nebula for the first time with the members of the team, using the receiver we had built,” comments Yasumasa Yamasaki, an OPU graduate student and the lead author of the paper describing the development of the wideband receiver components. “I feel that this achievement was made possible by the cooperation of many people involved in the project.”

When compared to the receivers currently used in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the breadth of frequencies that can be simultaneously observed with the new receivers is striking. To cover the radio frequencies between 211 and 373 GHz, ALMA uses two receivers, Band 6 and 7, but can use only one of them at a given time. In addition, ALMA receivers can observe two strips of frequency ranges with widths of 5.5 and 4 GHz using the Band 6 and 7 receivers, respectively. In contrast, the new wideband receiver can cover all the frequencies with a single unit. In addition, especially in the higher frequency band, the receiver can detect radio waves in a frequency range of 17 GHz at a time.

Schematic diagram of the observable frequency bands of the newly developed broadband receiver system (top) and the ALMA Band 6 and Band 7 receivers (bottom). The darker areas indicate the frequency bands that can be observed simultaneously. The ALMA Band 6 receiver can observe two 5.5 GHz bands, and the Band 7 receiver can observe two 4 GHz bands at the same time. The newly developed wideband receiver system is capable of observing two 4-GHz bands and one 17-GHz band; thus six carbon monoxide emission lines can be observed simultaneously.
Credit: Osaka Prefecture University/NAOJ.

“It was a very valuable experience for me to be involved in the development of this broadband receiver from the beginning to successful observation,” says Sho Masui, a graduate student at OPU and the lead author of the research paper reporting the development of the receiver and the test observations. “Based on these experiences, I would like to continue to devote further efforts to the advancement of astronomy through instrument development.”

This wideband technology has made it possible to observe the interstellar molecular clouds along the Milky Way more efficiently using the 1.85-m radio telescope. In addition, widening the receiver bandwidth is listed as one of the high priority items in the ALMA Development Roadmap which aims to further improve the performance of ALMA. This achievement is expected to be applied to ALMA and other large radio telescopes, and to make a significant contribution to enhance our understanding of the evolution of the Universe.

Additional Information

These research results are presented in the following two papers published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan.
– S. Masui et al. “Development of a new wideband heterodyne receiver system for the Osaka 1.85 m mm–submm telescope: Receiver development and the first light of simultaneous observations in 230 GHz and 345 GHz bands with an SIS-mixer with 4–21 GHz IF output”
– Y. Yamasaki et al. “Development of a new wideband heterodyne receiver system for the Osaka 1.85 m mm–submm telescope: Corrugated horn and optics covering the 210–375 GHz band”

This research was supported by MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (JP18H05440, JP20J23670, JP15K05025, and JP26247026).

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) (CL), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan.

ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

ALMA is a time machine!

ALMA-In Search of our Cosmic Origins

From National Astronomical Observatory of Japan [国立天文台] (JP): “New Radio Receiver Opens Wider Window to Radio Universe”

From National Astronomical Observatory of Japan [国立天文台] (JP)

July 8, 2021

Distribution of CO isotopologues in the Orion molecular cloud observed simultaneously with the newly developed broadband receiver. (Credit: OSAKA PREFECTURE UNIVERSITY [大阪府立大学] (JP)/NAOJ)

Researchers have used the latest wireless technology to develop a new radio receiver for astronomy. The receiver is capable of capturing radio waves at frequencies over a range several times wider than conventional ones, and can detect radio waves emitted by many types of molecules in space at once. This is expected to enable significant progresses in the study of the evolution of the Universe and the mechanisms of star and planet formation.

Interstellar molecular clouds of gas and dust provide the material for stars and planets. Each type of molecule emits radio waves at characteristic frequencies and astronomers have detected emissions from various molecules over a wide range of frequencies. By observing these radio waves, we can learn about the physical properties and chemical composition of interstellar molecular clouds. This has been the motivation driving the development of a wideband receiving system.

In general, the range of radio frequencies that can be observed simultaneously by a radio telescope is very limited. This is due to the characteristics of the components that make up a radio receiver. In this new research, the team of researchers in Osaka Prefecture University (OPU) and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) has widened the bandwidth of various components, such as the horn that brings radio waves into the receiver, the waveguide (metal tube) circuit that propagates the radio waves, and the radio frequency converter. By combining these components into a receiver system, the team has achieved a range of simultaneously detectable frequencies several times larger than before. Furthermore, this receiver system was mounted on the OPU 1.85-m radio telescope in NAOJ’s Nobeyama Radio Observatory [below], and succeeded in capturing radio waves from actual celestial objects. This shows that the results of this research are extremely useful in actual astronomical observations.

“It was a very emotional moment for me to share the joy of receiving radio waves from the Orion Nebula for the first time with the members of the team, using the receiver we had built,” comments Yasumasa Yamasaki, an OPU graduate student and the lead author of the paper describing the development of the wideband receiver components. “I feel that this achievement was made possible by the cooperation of many people involved in the project.”

When compared to the receivers currently used in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) [below], the breadth of frequencies that can be simultaneously observed with the new receivers is striking. To cover the radio frequencies between 211 and 373 GHz, ALMA uses two receivers, Band 6 and 7, but can use only one of them at a given time. In addition, ALMA receivers can observe two strips of frequency ranges with widths of 5.5 and 4 GHz using the Band 6 and 7 receivers, respectively. In contrast, the new wideband receiver can cover all the frequencies with a single unit. In addition, especially in the higher frequency band, the receiver can detect radio waves in a frequency range of 17 GHz at a time.

“It was a very valuable experience for me to be involved in the development of this broadband receiver from the beginning to successful observation,” says Sho Masui, a graduate student at OPU and the lead author of the research paper reporting the development of the receiver and the test observations. “Based on these experiences, I would like to continue to devote further efforts to the advancement of astronomy through instrument development.”

This wideband technology has made it possible to observe the interstellar molecular clouds along the Milky Way more efficiently using the 1.85-m radio telescope. In addition, widening the receiver bandwidth is listed as one of the high priority items in the ALMA Development Roadmap which aims to further improve the performance of ALMA. This achievement is expected to be applied to ALMA and other large radio telescopes, and to make a significant contribution to enhance our understanding of the evolution of the Universe.

These research results are presented in the following two papers published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan.

Development of a new wideband heterodyne receiver system for the Osaka 1.85 m mm–submm telescope: Receiver development and the first light of simultaneous observations in 230 GHz and 345 GHz bands with an SIS-mixer with 4–21 GHz IF output

Development of a new wideband heterodyne receiver system for the Osaka 1.85 m mm–submm telescope: Corrugated horn and optics covering the 210–375 GHz band”

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) [国立天文台] (JP) is an astronomical research organisation comprising several facilities in Japan, as well as an observatory in Hawaii. It was established in 1988 as an amalgamation of three existing research organizations – the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory of the University of Tokyo, International Latitude Observatory of Mizusawa, and a part of Research Institute of Atmospherics of Nagoya University.

In the 2004 reform of national research organizations, NAOJ became a division of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences.

NAOJ/Subaru Telescope at Mauna Kea Hawaii, USA,4,207 m (13,802 ft) above sea level

European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU)/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

Solar Flare Telescope

Nobeyama Millimeter Array Radioheliograph, located near Minamimaki, Nagano at an elevation of 1350m

Mizusawa VERA Observatory

Okayama Astrophysical Observatory

NAOJ Kyoto U 3.8m SEMEI Telescope