Astronomers have found a way to directly measure the amount of gas in protoplanetary disks without making assumptions about the relative amounts of different types of gas, making this method more accurate and robust than previous methods. Planets form in protoplanetary disks of gas and dust around young stars. Scientists study protoplanetary disks by looking…

Scientists used the unique hydrogen radio recombination lines on MWC 349A to reveal hidden collimated jets. While using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the masers around oddball star MWC 349A scientists discovered something unexpected: a previously unseen jet of material launching from the star’s gas disk at impossibly high speeds. What’s more,…

While studying a nearby pair of merging galaxies using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) scientists discovered two supermassive black holes growing simultaneously near the center of the newly coalescing galaxy. These super-hungry giants are the closest together that scientists have ever observed in multiple wavelengths. What’s more, the new research reveals that binary black holes…

ALMA and JWST Reveal Galactic Shock is Shaping Stephan’s Quintet in Mysterious Ways Shockwaves resulting from the violent collision between an intruder galaxy and Stephan’s Quintet are helping astronomers to understand how turbulence influences gas in the intergalactic medium. New observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)…

At the heart of nearly every galaxy lurks a supermassive black hole. But not all supermassive black holes are alike: there are many types. Quasars, quasi-stellar objects, are one of the brightest and most active types of supermassive black holes. An international group of scientists has published new observations of the first quasar ever identified —…