New discoveries

If you don’t clean your room, dust will settle everywhere. The same is true for space. Young stars are surrounded by flat disks of gas and dust. Without any cleaning going on, the dust will spread all over the disk.  So, what about the empty regions in this ALMA...

Have you ever seen a black hole? Impossible, you’d probably say. After all, a black hole doesn’t emit any light – that’s why it’s called black. So there’s nothing to see, right? Still, astronomers hope to take the first ‘photo’ of the giant black hole in the center of...

These days, most people live in cities. Little wonder then that most people are also born in cities. But if you want to know where exactly in those cities most people were born, it’s not so easy to find out.  With stars, it’s the same. Almost all stars are...

When our Milky Way galaxy was still young, billions of years ago, it was smaller and more chaotic than it is now. It also contained huge amounts of cold molecular gas – the stuff that stars are born from. At least, that’s the conclusion that astronomers draw from new...

The 66 dishes of ALMA – the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array – are being equipped with new receivers. They will improve the ability of ALMA to search for water in the Universe.  On Earth, water is very important for life. Out there in the Universe, there’s also a lot...

A young star in the constellation Sagittarius (the Archer) is orbited by two infant planets. The planets were found by ALMA. They’re about twice as large as the planet Saturn in our own solar system. Planets orbiting other stars have been found before. But in this case, the planets...

Just like a large tree grows from a tiny seed, planets grow from tiny dust particles. First, the dust particles stick together to larger and larger ‘dust bunnies’. Later on, they grow into pebbles and rocks. Those larger objects feel each other’s gravity and eventually clutter together into planets. ...

Many galaxies are beautiful spirals, but IC 2163 is different. This galaxy looks a bit like a huge eye. The spiral arms are like giant eyelids, surrounding a central pupil. Using ALMA, astronomers have now discovered what’s going on here.  IC 2163 is not alone. Close to it is...

Many stars are single, just like our own Sun. But there are also many twins and even triples in the Universe – two or three stars that were born together and keep each other company. Using ALMA, astronomers have now witnessed the birth of a triple star system. The...

The stunning spiral pattern in this ALMA image is produced by a binary star – two stars orbiting each other. The size and shape of the spiral provides astronomers with information about the binary’s orbit. Apparently, this orbit is not circular, but elliptical – very elongated. The spiral pattern...

Most galaxies have black holes in their cores. Quite often, those huge black holes are pretty quiet, like the black hole in the core of our own Milky Way galaxy. But sometimes, huge amounts of gas and dust are drawn inward. This material becomes very hot and starts to...

Astronomers know how planets like our own Earth were born. When the Sun was young, it was surrounded by a flat, rotating disk of gas and dust. Dust particles, pebbles, and small rocks in this protoplanetary disk slowly clumped together to form Earth-like planets.  But the origin of giant...