Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2018

MAY-JUNE 2018 ALMA reveals inner web of stellar nursery by ALMA Observatory T his spectacular and unusual image shows part of the fa- mous Orion Nebula, a star for- mation region lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. It combines a mosaic of millimetre-wavelength im- ages from the Atacama Large Mil- limeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the IRAM 30-metre telescope, shown in red, with a more familiar infrared view from the HAWK-I in- strument on ESO’s Very Large Tele- scope, shown in blue. The group of bright blue-white stars at the upper- left is the Trapezium Cluster —made up of hot young stars that are only a few million years old. The wispy, fibre-like structures seen in this large image are long fila- ments of cold gas, only visible to tel- escopes working in the millimetre wavelength range. They are invisible T he squared area in the image on the side is the same as the ALMA image above. [ESO]