Following a generous grant from the National Science Foundation’s Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII), NSF’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) will expand efforts to establish and support the co-existence of research and commercial entities across the radio spectrum. 

The $1.75 million grant extends the capabilities of NRAO’s National Radio Dynamic Zone (NRDZ) project and allows for additional research and testing. Over the past two years, NRDZ has collaborated with primary satellite communications providers to test cooperative use of the spectrum, allowing for research programs and commercial entities to coexist. 

“For decades, it was sufficient to split up the radio spectrum into smaller pieces and allocate everyone a piece,” said Chris De Pree, NRDZ Project Director at NRAO. “As global communication demands have grown, and the capabilities of radio astronomy have increased, we all find ourselves operating in parts of the spectrum that previously were only occupied by passive users. Recently, we’ve been working with primary satellite providers to figure out just how often we interfere with each other, and how we can better cooperate and coordinate to avoid interference.” 

The next phase of the project, supported by the new grant, includes further development of advanced spectrum monitoring devices for tracking and analyzing spectrum use and interference, and a complete census of the radio frequency interference (RFI) environment around NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in Socorro, New Mexico. NRAO will also use this grant to develop and test a specific model of spectrum sharing that can be utilized in the portion of the spectrum used for Low Earth Orbit satellite downlink signals.

“The goal of NRDZ is to examine and solve the problems that come with present and future demands on the radio spectrum,” said Tony Beasley, NRAO Director. “Cooperation and coexistence are imperative for the future of astronomical research in the radio spectrum and ongoing efforts from NRDZ are proving that this relationship is possible. Continued support from NSF will allow us to not only explore additional avenues for cooperation but also learn more about and to test our own agility.” 

NRAO’s NRDZ project was established in 2020 following an initial NSF grant of $3.5 million and included design and development funding for an advanced spectrum monitoring system— currently under construction at NRAO’s Central Development Laboratory (CDL), and broader impacts programs including high school curriculum, citizen science research opportunities and undergraduate curriculum to help support understanding of spectrum use, policy, and the radio economy. The grant also provided the foundation for the creation of NRAO’s SuperKnova learning platform. 

“Radio interference continues to grow, while new telescope instruments depend on sensing weaker signals across more spectrum bands than ever before,” said Debra Fischer, the Division Director for Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. “Research efforts on overcoming interference challenges like the NRAO National Radio Dynamic Zones project are essential to enable the next generation of discoveries.”

“NSF provided funding for National Radio Dynamic Zones projects because the future of scientific research in many fields depends on creative ways to share the limited available radio spectrum with other users,” said John Chapin, Special Advisor for Spectrum at the National Science Foundation. “The NRAO NRDZ project is an important step towards applying new spectrum coexistence approaches to solve important interference challenges facing radio astronomy observatories.”

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Media contact:
Amy C. Oliver
Public Information & News Manager, NRAO
aoliver@nrao.edu

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In 1919 astronomers Arthur Eddington and Andrew Crommelin captured photographic images of a total solar eclipse. The Sun was in the constellation Taurus at the time, and a handful of its stars could be seen in the photographs. But the stars weren’t quite in their expected place. The tremendous gravity of the Sun had deflected the light of these stars, making them appear slightly out of place. It was the first demonstration that gravity could change the path of light, just as predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915.

The bending of light by the mass of a star or galaxy is one of the central predictions of general relativity. Although Einstein first predicted the deflection of light from a single star, others such as Oliver Lodge argued that a large mass could act as a gravitational lens, warping the path of light similar to the way a glass lens focuses light. By 1935, Einstein demonstrated how light from a distant galaxy could be warped by a galaxy in front of it to create a ring of light. Such an Einstein Ring, as it came to be known, would make the distant galaxy appear as a ring or arc of light around the closer galaxy. But Einstein thought this effect would never be observed. These arcs of light would be too faint for optical telescopes to capture. Einstein was right until 1998 when the Hubble Space Telescope captured a ring around the galaxy B1938+666. This was the first optical ring to be observed, but it wasn’t the first Einstein Ring. The first ring was seen in radio light, and it was captured by the Very Large Array (VLA).

In 1987, a team of students at the MIT Research Lab in Electronics under Prof. Bernard Burke, and led by PhD student Jackie Hewitt, used the VLA to make detailed images of known radio-emitting objects. One of them, known as MG1131+0456, showed a distinct oval shape with two bright lobes. Hewitt and her team considered several models to explain the unusual shape, but only an Einstein Ring matched the data. Einstein’s galactic prediction was finally observed.

Radio astronomy is particularly good at capturing lensed galaxies. They have become a powerful tool for radio astronomers. Just as a glass lens focuses light to make an object appear brighter and larger, so does a gravitational lens. By observing lensed galaxies radio astronomers can study galaxies that would be too distant and faint to see on their own. Einstein rings can be used to measure the mass of the closer galaxy or galactic cluster since the amount of gravitational lensing depends on the mass of the foreground galaxy.

One of the more interesting aspects of gravitational lensing is that it can be used to measure the rate at which the universe expands. Light from a distant galaxy can take many different paths as it passes the foreground galaxy. Each of these paths can have different distances, which means the light can reach us at different times. We might see a burst of light from the galaxy multiple times, each from a different path. Astronomers can use this to calculate galactic distance, and thus the scale of the cosmos.

Since the first detection of an Einstein ring by the VLA, radio astronomers have found more of them, and have captured them in more detail. In 2015, for example, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) made a detailed image of the lensed arcs from a distant galaxy named SDP.81. The image was sharp enough that astronomers could trace the arcs back to their source to study how stars formed within the galaxy.

Einstein rings are now commonly seen in astronomical images, particularly in deep field images, such as those of the James Webb Space Telescope and others. As radio astronomy has shown, they are more than just beautiful. They give us a new lens on the cosmos.

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NSF’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) has announced major updates to its organizational mission statement that are reflective of the Observatory’s long-standing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in astrophysics.

NRAO’s updated mission statement reads:

In partnership with the scientific community, we…

• Provide world-leading telescopes, instrumentation, data and expertise;
• Train the next generation of scientists and engineers;
• Advance broader, equitable, inclusive participation in science and engineering; and
• Promote astronomy to foster a more scientifically literate society.

The addition of language specific to NRAO’s DEI commitment is no surprise. The Observatory has employed a Diversity Officer since 2009 and established its Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) in 2015.

NRAO’s ODI Director Lyndele von Schill said of the update, “Working with our partners to develop and maintain programs that support and elevate this mission has been a key component of NRAO’s success in training the next generation of scientists and engineers. Diversity, equity, and inclusion have been guiding principles at NRAO for more than a decade, and it is fitting that our mission statement now reflects and acknowledges our core commitment to the astrophysics community.”   

NRAO currently supports and manages multiple broadening participation programs that promote diversity and inclusion in astrophysics. These programs include the National Astronomy Consortium (NAC), the National and International Non-Traditional Exchange (NINE) program, Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) students in the United States and Chile, RADIAL, the PROVOCA STEM program for girls in Chile, and the Superknova e-learning platform. This year, NRAO will launch two new programs, Exploring the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) project with the support of Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), and the Women in Engineering Program (WiEP) with the support of the Heising-Simons Foundation (HSF).

“NRAO has always believed and more importantly has always embodied the belief, that astronomy is for everyone. The programs and partnerships we have built over the past five decades are a crucial part of who we are as an organization, and as members of the astrophysics community,” said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. “This update ensures that our mission statement is reflective of who we are, what we believe, and where we are headed.”

“This updated mission statement expresses the working values of NRAO and strengthens their commitment to building an inclusive workforce,” said Debra Fischer, Division Director for Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. 

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Media contact:

Amy C. Oliver
Public Information & News Manager, NRAO
aoliver@nrao.edu

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Researchers find the spiral may be feeding star formation in a nearby stellar nursery

By precisely tracing a small, almost imperceptible, wobble in a nearby star’s motion through space, astronomers have discovered a Jupiter-like planet orbiting that star, which is one of a binary pair. Their work, using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), produced the first-ever determination of the complete, 3-dimensional structure of the orbits of a binary pair of stars and a planet orbiting one of them. This achievement, the astronomers said, can provide valuable new insights on the process of planet formation.

Though more than 5,000 extrasolar planets have been discovered so far, only three have been discovered using the technique — called astrometry — that produced this discovery. However, the feat of determining the 3-D architecture of a binary-star system that includes a planet “cannot be achieved with other exoplanet discovery methods,” said Salvador Curiel, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

“Since most stars are in binary or multiple systems, being able to understand systems such as this one will help us understand planet formation in general,” Curiel said.

The two stars, which together are called GJ 896AB, are about 20 light-years from Earth — close neighbors by astronomical standards. They are red dwarf stars, the most common type in our Milky Way galaxy. The larger one, around which the planet orbits, has about 44 percent of the mass of our Sun, while the smaller is about 17 percent as massive as the Sun. They are separated by about the distance of Neptune from the Sun, and orbit each other once every 229 years.

For their study of GJ 896AB, the astronomers combined data from optical observations of the system made between 1941 and 2017 with data from VLBA observations between 2006 and 2011. They then made new VLBA observations in 2020. The continent-wide VLBA’s supersharp resolution — ability to see fine detail — produced extremely precise measurements of the stars’ positions over time. The astronomers performed extensive analysis of the data that revealed the stars’ orbital motions as well as their common motion through space.

Detailed tracing of the larger star’s motion showed a slight wobble that revealed the existence of the planet. The wobble is caused by the planet’s gravitational effect on the star. The star and planet orbit a location between them that represents their common center of mass. When that location, called the barycenter, is sufficiently far from the star, the star’s motion around it can be detectable.

The astronomers calculated that the planet has about twice the mass of Jupiter and orbits the star every 284 days. Its distance from the star is slightly less than Venus’ distance from the Sun. The planet’s orbit is inclined roughly 148 degrees from the orbits of the two stars.

“This means that the planet moves around the main star in the opposite direction to that of the secondary star around the main star,” said Gisela Ortiz-León, of UNAM and the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy. “This is the first time that such dynamical structure has been observed in a planet associated with a compact binary system that presumably was formed in the same protoplanetary disk,” she added.

“Additional detailed studies of this and similar systems can help us gain important insights into how planets are formed in binary systems. There are alternate theories for the formation mechanism, and more data can possibly indicate which is most likely,” said Joel Sanchez-Bermudez, of UNAM. “In particular, current models indicate that such a large planet is very unlikely as a companion to such a small star, so maybe those models need to be adjusted,” he added.

The astrometric technique will be a valuable tool for characterizing more planetary systems, the astronomers said. “We can do much more work like this with the planned Next Generation VLA (ngVLA),” said Amy Mioduszewski, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “With it, we may be able to find planets as small as the Earth.”

The astronomers are reporting their findings in the 1 September issue of the Astronomical Journal.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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Media Contact:
Dave Finley, Public Information Officer
(505) 241-9210
dfinley@nrao.edu

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The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) has given its prestigious Klumpke-Roberts Award for 2022 to Suzanne (Suzy) Gurton, Assistant Director for Education and Public Outreach of the NSF’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The Klumpke-Roberts award honors those who have made outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy.

The award recognizes Gurton’s “almost 40 years of leading, organizing, developing, and training educators for astronomy outreach programs that have become permanent fixtures in the outreach community, lasting long beyond her involvement,” according to the ASP’s announcement.

“We’re very proud to see Suzy’s dedication and leadership in astronomy education and outreach receive this well-deserved recognition,” said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. “We’re also very happy that she has brought that dedication and her wealth of expertise to leading our observatory’s programs aimed at the public and educators,” he added.

At NRAO, Gurton leads a team of writers, educators, artists and animators who bring the excitement of astronomy to students, educators, and the public through the news media, formal and informal education programs, the Very Large Array Visitor Center, and social media. Since joining NRAO in 2016, she has led a significant expansion of the observatory’s outreach and educational programs, raising the observatory’s public profile and its impact on science education.

Gurton’s career includes working at planetariums, including Morehead Planetarium at the University of North Carolina, the University of Colorado, and as Director of the Santa Fe Community College planetarium. She also was an astronomy lecturer at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and a writer/producer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

From 2000 to 2016, she was Director of Education at ASP, where she oversaw that organization’s science education programs, including Family ASTRO, Astronomy from the Ground Up, and Night Sky Network. She also edited ASP’s newsletter for teachers, Universe in the Classroom.

Her work has included not only presenting astronomy to the public herself, but also teaching both amateur and professional astronomers how to effectively engage with the general public and students. She was a lead educator in the American Astronomical Society’s Astronomy Ambassadors program, aimed at training early career astronomers in public outreach.

Previous recipients of the Klumpke-Roberts Award include Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Chesley Bonestell, Timothy Ferris, Walter Sullivan, Heidi Hammel, and the staffs of Sky & Telescope and Astronomy magazines.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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Following a generous grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Central Development Laboratory (CDL) at NSF’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) will soon launch an ambitious Women in Engineering program that will increase opportunities for women to enter the field of radio astronomy through engineering pathways. The program will include a postdoctoral fellowship and a co-op program for undergraduate and graduate students. 

As part of NRAO’s ongoing commitment to women in engineering, the new fellowship program will support outstanding postdoctoral women engineers whose research is related to the organization’s mission. These fellows, who will be granted two-year appointments, will spend up to 75 percent of their time on self-directed research while also contributing to the Observatory’s development and delivery of radio astronomy techniques, capabilities, or education and public outreach activities. The co-op program will provide six-month laboratory work experiences for graduate and undergraduate women engineering students, giving them the opportunity to contribute to and learn from ongoing research and engineering projects. The CDL team additionally hopes that at least some of the fellows and co-op students from the program will go on to permanent employment with NRAO. 

“It is an exciting time to be working for NRAO. Our technology plays an important role in headline-making discoveries in astronomy, including the recent imaging of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. And in order to keep doing that work we need to find and elevate the best of the best in science and engineering,” said Bert Hawkins, Director of CDL. “This grant will allow CDL to encourage more women to embark on engineering careers in radio astronomy, and will positively impact the development of the technology that will make tomorrow’s headlines. We are grateful to the Heising-Simons Foundation for this opportunity and look forward to working with them in establishing the Women in Engineering program at CDL.”

The CDL Women in Engineering program will build upon the insights from the landmark 2012 study, “Stemming the Tide: Why Women Leave Engineering,” by creating stimulating, rewarding, and positive work experiences that both value and encourage contributions from women in engineering fields. This type of early positive engagement has been shown to increase the likelihood that women will both enter and remain in the field, bringing diverse viewpoints to the ever-changing needs of engineering projects. The $725,000 Heising-Simons Foundation grant will allow NRAO for the initial development and maintenance of the Women in Engineering Program during its first two years. 

NRAO Director Tony Beasley said, “Diverse viewpoints and expertise are what keeps NRAO at the forefront of engineering in radio astronomy. NRAO is excited to work with the Heising-Simons Foundation to expand our commitment to making radio astronomy and engineering a positive and growth-oriented career path for women.”

About the Heising-Simons Foundation

The Heising-Simons Foundation is a family foundation based in Los Altos and San Francisco, California. The Foundation works with its many partners to advance sustainable solutions in climate and clean energy, enable groundbreaking research in science, enhance the education of our youngest learners, and support human rights for all people.

About NRAO

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. Furthering NSF’s mission to advance the progress of science, the NRAO enables research into the Universe at radio wavelengths and provides world-class telescopes, instrumentation, and expertise to the scientific community. NRAO’s mission includes a commitment to broader, equitable, inclusive participation in science and engineering, training the next generation of scientists and engineers, and promoting astronomy to foster a more scientifically literate society. NRAO operates three research facilities: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), which are available for use by scientists from around the globe, regardless of institutional or national affiliation. NRAO welcomes applicants who bring diverse and innovative dimensions to the Observatory and to the field of radio astronomy. For more information about NRAO, go to https://public.nrao.edu.

Media Contact:

Amy C. Oliver
Public Information & News Manager, NRAO
434-242-9584
aoliver@nrao.edu

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While observing a newly-dormant galaxy using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), scientists discovered that it had stopped forming stars not because it had used up all of its gas but because most of its star-forming fuel had been thrown out of the system as it merged with another galaxy. The result is a first for ALMA scientists. What’s more, if proven common, the results could change the way scientists think about galaxy mergers and deaths. The results of the research are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

As galaxies move through the Universe, they sometimes encounter other galaxies. As they interact, each galaxy’s gravity pulls on the other. The ensuing tug-of-war flings gas and stars away from the galaxies, leaving behind streams of material known as tidal tails. 

And that’s just what scientists believe happened to SDSS J1448+1010, but with a plot twist. The massive galaxy, which was born when the Universe was about half its current age, has nearly completed merging with another galaxy. During observations with the HST and ALMA— an international collaboration in which the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a partner— scientists discovered tidal tails containing roughly half of the entire system’s cold, star-forming gas. The discovery of the forcefully discarded material— equal to 10 billion times the mass of Earth’s Sun— was an indication that the merger may be responsible for snuffing out star formation, and that’s something scientists didn’t expect. 

“What initially made this massive galaxy interesting was that, for some reason, it suddenly stopped forming stars about 70 million years ago immediately following a burst of star-forming activity. Most galaxies are happy to just keep forming stars,” said Justin Spilker, an astronomer at Texas A&M University and the lead author of the paper. “Our observations with ALMA and Hubble proved that the real reason the galaxy stopped forming stars is that the merger process ejected about half the gas fuel for star formation into intergalactic space. With no fuel, the galaxy couldn’t keep forming stars.” 

The discovery is shedding light on the processes by which galaxies live or die, and helping scientists to better understand their evolution. 

“When we look out at the Universe, we see some galaxies that are actively forming new stars, like our own Milky Way, and some that aren’t. But those ‘dead’ galaxies have many old stars in them, so they must have formed all of those stars at some point and then stopped making new ones,” said Wren Suess, a cosmology fellow at the University of California Santa Cruz and a co-author of the paper. “We still don’t yet understand all of the processes that make galaxies stop forming stars, but this discovery shows just how powerful these major galaxy mergers are, and how much they can affect how a galaxy grows and changes over time.” 

Because the new result is from a single observation, it is currently unclear just how common this tug-of-war and its resultant quiescence may be. However, the discovery challenges long-held theories about exactly how star formation stops and galaxies die and has provided scientists with an exciting new challenge: to find more examples.  

“While it’s pretty clear from this system that cold gas really can end up way outside of a merger system that shuts off a galaxy, the sample size of one galaxy tells us very little about how common this process is,” said David Setton, a graduate student in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh and a co-author of the paper. “But, there are many galaxies out there like J1448+1010 that we’re able to catch right in the middle of those crashes and study exactly what happens to them when they go through that stage. The ejection of cold gas is an exciting new piece of the quiescence puzzle, and we’re excited to try to find more examples of this.”

Spilker added, “Astronomers used to think that the only way to make galaxies stop forming stars was through really violent, fast processes, like a bunch of supernovae exploding in the galaxy to blow most of the gas out of the galaxy and heat up the rest. Our new observations show that it doesn’t take a ‘flashy’ process to cut off star formation. The much slower merging process can also put an end to star formation and galaxies.” 

Resource

“Star Formation Suppression by Tidal Removal of Cold Molecular Gas from an Intermediate-Redshift Massive Post-starburst Galaxy,” J. Spilker et al, 2022, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac75ea

About NRAO

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

 About ALMA

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).

ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

Media Contact:

Amy C. Oliver
Public Information Officer, ALMA
Public Information & News Manager, NRAO
+1 434 242 9584
aoliver@nrao.edu

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The NSF’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is supporting the work of an astronomer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) who will focus on characterizing, selecting, and developing sites in northern Mexico for antennas of the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). Alfonso Trejo-Cruz, who received his Ph.D from UNAM in 2010, will begin the new position in September.

The ngVLA is a system of 263 dish antennas spread across North America and concentrated in the U.S. Southwest that will provide dramatic new scientific capabilities to the world’s astronomers. With sensitivity to detect faint objects and resolving power — ability to see fine detail — more than 10 times greater than the current VLA, the ngVLA will be able to address fundamental questions in all major areas of astrophysics.

After receiving his Ph.D, Trejo-Cruz worked at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan, conducting research on evolved stars known as asymptotic giant branch stars, and also contributing to user support activities there for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). In 2014, he became an ALMA Support Astronomer at ASIAA, performing data processing management, training of postdoctoral researchers, and co-leading analysis-related ALMA software tools. His new position with UNAM’s Institute of Radioastronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA), located in the city of Morelia, will return him to Mexico.

The ngVLA will have antennas located across North America and extending to the Caribbean and Hawaii. Several of those antennas will be placed in northern Mexico.

“Finding the right locations for antennas is a complex task. In addition to locating them where they can best contribute to the overall imaging performance of the system, other important considerations include weather, logistics, land availability, and freedom from radio interference,” said Eric Murphy, NRAO’s ngVLA Project Scientist. “We look forward to having Alfonso lead this effort in Mexico,” he added.

In 2021, the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey (Astro2020) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave the ngVLA project high priority. This followed a recommendation for support of the ngVLA from the Canadian Astronomy Long Range Plan 2020-2030, a report on priorities and recommendations for Canadian astronomy over the next decade. Also in 2021, the National Science Foundation awarded NRAO $23 million for design and development work on a prototype antenna for the ngVLA.

The ngVLA next will require approval by the National Science Foundation’s National Science Board and funding by Congress. Construction could begin by 2026 with early scientific observations starting in 2029 and full scientific operations by 2035.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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Ground-breaking 2014 HL Tau observational data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has been cited in more than 1,000 scientific studies in the past 7.5 years, aiding in major breakthroughs in scientists’ understanding of planet formation. The milestone comes as engineers at the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) embark on ambitious upgrades to the receivers responsible for the clarity of initial observations.

During science verification testing of ALMA’s then-new high-resolution capabilities in 2014, astronomers turned the telescope on HL Tau, a very young star system located 450 light years away from Earth in the constellation Taurus. The resulting image uncovered astonishing details in the planet-forming disk surrounding the Sun-like star and laid the foundation for what has become nearly a decade of increasingly revelatory research. “When we were planning the first ALMA Long Baseline Campaign in 2014, targets were chosen for a range of science categories that were bright and well-studied at lower angular resolution, and that might show, as yet unrevealed, structure at higher angular resolution,” said Crystal Brogan, an astronomer at NRAO and the lead author of the original results paper, which published in The Astrophysical Journal in 2015 and was made possible by a wide range of scientists and engineers across the global ALMA collaboration. “For the protoplanetary disk topic, we were anxious about the potential that we would see little to nothing, certainly nothing spectacular. At that time, there was little indication that there would be much substructure in disk morphology at this relatively young stage of protoplanetary disk evolution. In other words, we feared it could be a flop.”

Ultimately, scientists unveiled not only the best image ever produced using ALMA, but also the clearest picture at the time of planet formation, with detail previously available only in computer simulations and artists’ conceptions. The never-before-seen features in the young star system— including multiple concentric rings separated by clearly defined gaps that were revealed in even greater detail by NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in 2016— are now considered hallmarks of planet formation. “The extraordinary level of substructure that we observed in HL Tau, that could only be revealed by ALMA’s longest baselines, has changed the paradigm of protoplanetary disk formation, evolution and ultimately our understanding of planet formation, forever,” said Brogan. “The remarkable number of papers to date is a direct consequence of its scientific impact.” Similar substructure has now been observed in a wide range of protoplanetary disks with more being observed by ALMA every year. However, HL Tau will forever be the first.”

Stuartt Corder, Deputy Director of ALMA, and a co-author of the original results paper added, “The result was truly moving, beautiful as well as profound. Hard work over decades, plus a dramatic sprint to finish the infrastructure in the middle of 2014, enabled this dramatic and transformational result.”  

In addition to providing evidence for long-held theories of planet formation, the 2014 observations of HL Tau opened new windows on the Universe for both professional scientists and aspiring astronomers alike. Todd Hunter, an astronomer at NRAO and a co-author of the original results paper said, “Eighty-three of these citations are from PhD theses, meaning that the careers of an entire generation of young astronomers have been influenced by it.” Hunter added that forthcoming NSF-supported upgrades to ALMA’s 1.3mm (Band 6) receivers— which were developed at NRAO’s Central Development Laboratory (CDL) and were instrumental in capturing the now-famous images— will further increase the telescope’s capabilities to reveal the secrets of how star systems evolve and planets are formed. “ALMA has recently embarked on a Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade to improve the sensitivity and spectral grasp of the observatory, which will include the development and deployment of more powerful digital signal processing technology. These combined upgrades are essential to enable the next fundamental leap forward in understanding planet formation, as they will vastly increase the number of molecules that can be studied in detail in a single observation of a circumstellar disk”

To date, the 2014 HL Tau results have been cited in 1,013 scientific papers.

About NRAO

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. 

About ALMA

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).

ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

Media Contact:

Amy C. Oliver
Public Information Officer, ALMA
Public Information & News Manager, NRAO
+1 434 242 9584
aoliver@nrao.edu

The post ALMA’s 2014 Ground-Breaking HL Tau Results Have Appeared in Over 1,000 Scientific Papers in Less Than a Decade appeared first on National Radio Astronomy Observatory.