Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2024

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2024 vided high-resolution images show- ing the discs’ massive size, approxi- mately 100 times the distance be- tween the Earth and the Sun. Another co-author, Martijn L. van Gelder, provided resources to process the data collected by MIRI, revealing the chemical makeup of the jets. Adds Barsony, “So if it weren’t for MIRI, we wouldn’t even know that these jets existed, which is amaz- ing.” ALMA’s high-resolution obser- vations of the disks surrounding the two newly observed stars revealed the disks’ structure, as Barsony ex- plains, “Someone looking at this ALMA data not knowing there were twin jets would think, oh, it’s a large edge on disk with a central hole, in- stead of two edges on disks and two jets. That’s pretty remarkable.” Another remarkable thing about this discovery is that it may never have had the opportunity to hap- pen. JPL scientist Michael Ressler ex- plains, “Much of the research about binary protostars focuses on a few nearby star-forming regions. I had been awarded some observing time with JWST and chose to split it into a few small projects. For one proj- ect, I decided to study binaries in the Perseus star-forming region. However, I had been studying WL20, which is in the rho Ophi- uchus region in nearly the opposite part of the sky, for nearly 30 years, and I thought, ‘why not sneak it in? I’ll never get another chance, even if it doesn’t quite fit with the oth- ers.’ We had a very fortunate acci- dent with what we found; the results are stunning.” By combining multi-wavelength data from ALMA and JWST, these new findings shed light on the com- plex processes involved in forming multiple star systems. Astronomers plan to utilize ALMA’s future up- graded capabilities, like the Wide- band Sensitivity Upgrade, to con- tinue unraveling the mysteries sur- rounding the birth of stars and plan- etary systems. P revious page: Astronomers couldn’t believe their luck when observations across multiple radio and infrared wavelengths from ALMA and JWST re- vealed twin disks and jets erupting from a pair of young binary stars in WL20. [U.S. NSF/ NSF NRAO/B. Saxton.; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA] Above: These brightly colored shapes represent astronomical data collected by ALMA and NASA’s JWST telescopes. On the left, a composite image overlaps ALMA and JWST data, revealing the discs and parallel jets emitting from the pair of binary stars in WL20. The breakdown of the separate ALMA data and JWST data representing various chemical compositions is shown on the right. [U.S. NSF/NSF/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/NASA/JPL/JWST/B. Saxton] over 400 light years away from the Earth’s Solar System. “What we discovered was absolutely wild,” shares astronomer Mary Bar- sony, “We’ve known about star sys- tem WL20 for a long time. But what caught our attention is that one of the stars in the system appeared much younger than the rest. Using MIRI and ALMA together, we actu- ally saw that this ONE star was TWO stars right next to each other. A disk surrounded each of these stars, and each disc was emitting jets parallel to the other.” ALMA spotted the discs, while MIRI found the jets. Co-author Valentin J.M. Le Gouellec of NASA-ARC re- trieved and reduced ALMA archival data to reveal the discs’ composi- tion. At the same time, Lukasz Ty- choniec of Leiden Observatory pro- !