astrobites
Adele Plunkett
Site testing from the South Pole to the Arctic
When it comes to planning and building new telescopes, the site selection is an important consideration. This paper evaluates eleven sites around the world, including current and proposed sites of sub-mm observatories, airborne SOFIA locations, and northern-hemisphere sites that could be of interest for future observatories.
Astrophysical Classics: Larson’s “Laws”
This paper presents three famous relations very important for understanding the inner workings of molecular clouds and star formation processes.
Diamonds are an astronomer’s best friend
A team of astronomers and geologists have teamed up to study the composition of a rocky super-Earth which likely contains a layer of carbon in the form of diamond and graphite.
What’s going on in Orion’s head?
A wealth of observations tell an active accretion story within the Lambda Orionis Star Forming Region, at the head of the Orion constellation.
ALMA peers in on the curious case of one circumstellar disk
Amid all of the swirling chaos during star formation, the universe finds a way to order its diffuse gas into shining young stars. ALMA Science Verification observations give new insight.
First GASPs of Star Formation in Taurus
The well-known constellation Taurus is home to many young stars, and the details of star formation are explained by observing far-infrared radiation from several of these objects with the Herschel space observatory.
Astronomers go butterfly catching with ALMA
Molecular outflows are important components of the star formation process. These authors present observations of a butterfly-shaped outflow in Orion, and present several possible scenarios for this morphology.
ALMA’s look at a distant galaxy reveals similarities to nearby galaxies
This paper presents ALMA observations of the first ever measurement of both ionized nitrogen and carbon for the galaxy “LESS J0332″, which is determined to be at a redshift of 4.76 and have a metallicity similar to that of our sun. This suggests that the galaxy at a much earlier time in the universe had already evolved quite a bit.
It takes a village to raise… the ALMA observatory
During the three months that I worked as a visitor in the “Commissioning and Science Verification” group at ALMA, I had the opportunity to spend four week-long “turnos” (shifts) in northern Chile at the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF), where the antennas are operated. If you’re interested to learn more about ALMA, you can check [...]
Unveiling an important component of Milky Way gas
This paper suggests a new quantity to measure the brightness of gas emission throughout the Milky Way, and determines the regions where most stars are likely to be forming in our Galaxy.
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