Radio-telescopes in Chile push the limit for terrestrial observations.
Ben Lewis reports.....
Astronomers have spotted incredible jets of water vapour streaming away
from a protostar in the Cat's Paw Nebula, a star-forming region located
about 5500 light-years from Earth. The observations, published in The
Astrophysical Journal Letters, were made by a group from the National
Radio Astronomy Observatory in Virginia in the United States, using the
Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA), a collection of radio telescopes
in Chile, owned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Led by the
observatory’s Geoffrey Blake, the detected submillimeter-wavelength light
emitted by jets of heavy water streaming away from the protostar located
in the Cat’s Paw Nebula, known formally as NGC 6334I. Heavy water contains
the hydrogen isotope deuterium, instead of hydrogen itself. A product of
the Big Bang, there are about 26 deuterium atoms for every million hydrogen
atoms across the universe.
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The jets are a result of star formation. As a star begin to coalesce out
of massive clouds of dust and gas, most of the material surrounding it
is pulled towards the mass at the centre. However, some is propelled away
from the growing protostar as a pair of jets. The heavy water the researchers
observed is flowing away from either a single protostar or a small cluster
of them. The jets are likely to have formed relatively recently, because
they are smaller and orientated differently to potentially more-mature
jets seen in the same region. McGuire and colleagues also note that the
ALMA’s sister telescope, the Very Large Array, detected low frequency masers
– naturally occurring microwave versions of lasers – where the water jets
slam into surrounding gas. On a night of perfect atmospheric conditions,
the astronomers pushed ALMA’s equipment to detect the highest frequency
signals possible, wavelengths of 0.3 to 0.4 millimetres. “Normally, we
wouldn't be able to directly see this particular signal at all from the
ground,” says co-author Crystal Brogan. “However, ALMA can in fact detect
that signal. This is something no other telescope on Earth can achieve.”
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Water Found Near Proto-Star
- Wade Hampton III
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