New discoveries ALMA discovers moons in the making

Welcome to the ALMA website for kids!

Discover the world's largest observatory with Talma and Mathias

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Is ALMA a telescope?

Did you ever try to count the stars in the sky? It’s almost impossible – there’s just too many of them! On a clear, dark night, you can see thousands of stars. Too much to count. Sometimes, you can also see the Milky Way as a faint band of...

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New discoveries

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Ring-like galaxy is actually a distant twin of the Milky Way

Have you ever seen a galaxy that looks like a wedding ring? This image, obtained by ALMA, shows a galaxy known as SPT 0418-47. It is extremely far away: thegalaxy’s light took 12.4 billion years to reach Earth. According to the astronomers who took theimage, it looks very much...

ALMA maps organic molecules in the ‘coma’ of comet Wirtanen

A bright comet passed by the Earth in December, and ALMA has studied it in detail. On December 16, comet Wirtanen came as close as 11.4 million kilometers. That’s about thirty times as far as the moon – pretty close for a comet. Around that time, the comet was...

Sizing up Antares

So you thought the Sun is big? True, the Sun’s diameter is more than one hundred times as large as the diameter of the Earth.Pretty big. But some stars in our Milky Way galaxy are much larger. Using ALMA and radio telescopesin the USA, astronomers have now measured the...

Twinkle, twinkle, big black hole

The black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is twinkling. Well, not exactly. The black hole itself doesn’t emit any light, so it can’t twinkle. But due to its huge gravity, the black hole attracts gas from its immediate surroundings. Before the gas plunges into the...

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