Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2018

50 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2018 SPACE CHRONICLES First science with ALMA’s highest frequency capabilities by ALMAObservatory A team of scientists using the highest-frequency capabili- ties of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has uncovered jets of warm water vapor streaming away from a newly forming star. The researchers also detected the “fingerprints” of an astonishing assortment of mole- cules near this stellar nursery. The ALMA telescope in Chile has transformed how we see the uni- verse, showing us otherwise invisible parts of the cosmos. This array of in- credibly precise antennas studies a comparatively high-frequency sliver of radio light: waves that range from a few tenths of a millimeter to several millimeters in length. Re- cently, scientists pushed ALMA to its limits, harnessing the array’s high- est-frequency (shortest wavelength) capabilities, which peer into a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that straddles the line between in- frared light and radio waves. “High-frequency radio observations like these are normally not possi- ble from the ground,” said Brett McGuire, a chemist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, and lead author on a paper appearing in The Astrophysical Journal Letters . Under ideal atmospheric conditions, which occurred on the evening of 5 April 2018, astronomers trained ALMA’s highest-frequency, submil- limeter vision on a curious region of “They require the extreme precision and sensitivity of ALMA, along with some of the driest and most stable atmospheric conditions that can be found on Earth.” I llustration highlighting ALMA’s high-frequency ob- serving capabilities. [NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello]