Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2020

MAY-JUNE 2020 SPACE CHRONICLES ALMA and ROSINA data has revealed a sort of chemical thread during the whole process of star formation, in which phosphorus monoxide plays the dominant role,” says Rivilla, who is a researcher at the Arcetri Astro- physical Observatory of INAF, Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics. “Phosphorus is essential for life as we know it,” adds Altwegg. “As comets most probably delivered large amounts of organic com- pounds to the Earth, the phosphorus monoxide found in comet 67P may strengthen the link between comets and life on Earth.” This intriguing journey could be doc- umented because of the collabora- tive efforts between astronomers. “The detection of phosphorus monoxide was clearly thanks to an interdisciplinary exchange between telescopes on Earth and instruments in space,” says Altwegg. Leonardo Testi, ESO astronomer and ALMA European Operations Man- ager, concludes: “Understanding our cosmic origins, including how com- mon the chemical conditions favourable for the emergence of life are, is a major topic of modern astrophysics. While ESO and ALMA focus on the observa- tions of molecules in dis- tant young planetary systems, the direct ex- ploration of the chemi- cal inventory within our Solar System is made possible by ESA missions, like Rosetta. The synergy between world leading ground-based and space facilities, through the collaboration between ESO and ESA, is a power- ful asset for European researchers and enables transformational discov- eries like the one re- ported in this paper.” T his wide-field view shows the region of the sky, in the constel- lation of Auriga, where the star- forming region AFGL 5142 is located. This view was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. [ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2] famous comet 67P/Churyumov– Gerasimenko. The idea was to follow the trail of these phosphorus-bear- ing compounds. If the cavity walls collapse to form a star, particularly a less-massive one like the Sun, phos- phorus monoxide can freeze out and get trapped in the icy dust grains that remain around the new star. Even before the star is fully formed, those dust grains come together to form peb- bles, rocks and ulti- mately comets, which become transporters of phosphorus monoxide. ROSINA, which stands for Rosetta Orbiter Spec- trometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis, col- lected data from 67P for two years as Rosetta or- bited the comet. As- tronomers had found hints of phosphorus in the ROSINA data before, but they did not know what molecule had car- ried it there. Kathrin Al- T his video starts by showing a wide-field view of a region of the sky in the constellation of Auriga. It then zooms in to show the star-forming region AFGL 5142, recently observed with ALMA. [ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Rivilla et al.; Mario Weigand, www.Sky- Trip.de; ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2; Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org ).] twegg, the Principal Investigator for Rosina and an author in the new study, got a clue about what this molecule could be after being ap- proached at a conference by an as- tronomer studying star-forming regions with ALMA: “She said that phosphorus monoxide would be a very likely candidate, so I went back to our data and there it was!” This first sighting of phosphorus monoxide on a comet helps as- tronomers draw a connection be- tween star-forming regions, where the molecule is created, all the way to Earth. “The combination of the !