ALMA Observatory

🌄Sunrise on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile, at an altitude of 5,050 meters, is breathtaking.
Here are four of them. Which one do you like best?
1📷: July 20
2📷: July 21
3📷: July 22
4📷: July 23

✨FU Orionis, a double star system, first caught astronomers' attention in 1936 when the central star suddenly became 1,000 times brighter than usual.

⚠This behavior, expected from dying stars, had never been seen in a young star like FU Orionis. The strange phenomenon inspired a new classification of stars sharing the same name (FUor stars).

🌟FUor stars flare suddenly, erupting in brightness, before dimming again many years later. It is now understood that this brightening is due to the stars taking in energy from their surroundings via gravitational accretion, the main force that shapes stars and planets.

📷: 2024, artist's impression of the large-scale view of FU~Ori. The image shows the outflows produced by the interaction between strong stellar winds powered by the outburst and the remnant envelope from which the star formed. The stellar wind drives a strong shock into the envelope, and the CO gas swept up by the shock is what the new ALMA revealed. Image credit: NSF/NRAO/S. Dagnello

❤️The Hidden Heart of the Butterfly Nebula🦋
Observations with 🛰️ NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope , NASA's James Webb Space Telescope James Webb Space Telescope and ALMA📡
📍It's 3,400 light-years away, in the constellation of Scorpius.

An incredible synergy between observatories also revealed a surprising chemistry.

While Webb revealed the hot central star and the intricate ionized gas structures within the nebula, ALMA traced the cold molecular gas and dust forming the dense torus at its core. This combination shows how the torus shapes the bipolar “wings” of the nebula and explains why the central star remained hidden for so long. Together, JWST and ALMA provide a comprehensive view of both the hot and cold components of the Butterfly Nebula, offering new insights into the final stages of stellar evolution.

📷: 2025

"Einstein Cross"❌
The galaxy HerS-3, 11.6 billion light years away, appears multiplied in 5 images by a group of galaxies located 7.8 billion light years from Earth.

🔍This lens effect is called Einstein's Cross, it is rare and, in this case, even more extraordinary due to the presence of a fifth bright image in the center of the cross.

✨The light from HerS-3 is deflected by four massive foreground galaxies, located at the core of a larger group containing at least ten more galaxies. However, detailed gravitational lensing models showed that visible galaxies alone could not explain the exact arrangement of the five images.

📷:2025 P. Cox et al. ALMA.

https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-releases/an-exceptional-einstein-cross-reveals-hidden-dark-matter/

🌕Caught!
July 20th "International Moon Day"

📷: P. Carrillo.

📡"Can Organic Molecules Survive a Supernova Explosion? —First Detection of Hot Cores in a Supernova Remnant—" by National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered a stellar cradle of warm molecular gas surrounding a baby star in a region where a massive star exploded about 1,600 years ago. The cradle contains a variety of molecules, including complex organic molecules and water. The discovery suggests that newborn stars can remain protected and retain their chemical richness even in the harsh environment created by a supernova.

https://alma-telescope.jp/en/news/hmcores-202607.html

News - Can Organic Molecules Survive a Supernova Explosion? —First Detection of Hot Cores in a Supernova Remnant— - ALMA Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered a stellar cradle of warm molecular gas surrounding a baby star in a region where a massive star exploded about 1,600 years ago. The cradle contains …

📡 "Organic molecules can survive violent supernova explosions – fueling star and planet formation" by Brighter Side of News.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, a team in Japan identified two warm, dense cocoons of gas around infant stars inside the supernova remnant RX J1713.7−3946. These objects, known as hot cores, are rich in molecules linked to the chemistry of star and planet formation. According to the team, this is the first time hot cores have been detected inside a supernova remnant.
The finding, published in The Astrophysical Journal, suggests that even after a massive nearby star explodes, some newborn stars may stay wrapped tightly enough in their natal material to protect a surprisingly rich chemical inventory.

https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/organic-molecules-can-survive-violent-supernova-explosions-fueling-star-and-planet-formation/

Organic molecules can survive violent supernova explosions - fueling star and planet formation ALMA found two hot molecular cores inside a supernova remnant, with organic chemistry that appears surprisingly intact.

Who do you think will appear? 🤔

Comment with:
"AT-ATs" or "White Walkers"

📷: JC Rojas, ALMA Photo-ambassador, Chile.

📡📡〰✨

🔎Gravitational lens called “Shadow Blaster”.
🔴The red galaxy in the foreground is bending the light from the more distant Shadow Blaster galaxy, creating distorted of it that appear here as yellow arcs. It has been identified as the likely source of the high-energy neutrino event IC210922A.

➡️Detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in 2021.
Gravitational lensing occurs when a very massive foreground galaxy bends spacetime, acting as a cosmic magnifying glass that enlarges and distorts the image of a more distant galaxy behind it. In this case, a foreground galaxy.

📷: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

📡📡We are a radio telescope with 66 antennas, and the most visible part is the reflector. Each antenna has the same function as the mirror of an optical telescope: to capture radiation from distant astronomical objects and direct it toward a detector (Front End) that measures the levels of that radiation.

〰️We capture radiation at longer wavelengths, from a few hundred micrometers to approximately 1 millimeter (nearly a thousand times longer than visible light waves). These wavelengths are known as millimeter and submillimeter waves, which can be found in the electromagnetic spectrum within radio waves.

📷: Yerko Villalón ALMA Photo-Ambassador.