Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2016

SPACE CHRONICLES ALMA catches stellar cocoon with curious chemistry by ESO T his artist’s impression shows the molecules found in a hot molec- ular core in the Large Magellanic Cloud using ALMA. This core is the first such object to be found outside the Milky Way, and it has signifi- cantly different chemical makeup to those found in our own galaxy. The figure is a derivative work based on material from the following sources: ESO/M. Kornmesser; NASA, ESA, and S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team; NASA/ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)/ HEI. [FRIS/Tohoku University] A team of Japanese researchers have used the power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA) to ob- serve a massive star known as ST11 in our neighbouring dwarf galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Emission from a number of molecu- lar gases was detected. These indi- cated that the team had discovered a concentrated region of comparati- vely hot and dense molecular gas around the newly ignited star ST11. This was evidence that they had found something never before seen outside of the Milky Way — a hot molecular core. Hot molecular cores must be: (rela- tively) small, with a diameter of less than 0.3 light-years; have a density