Nature Science

STELLAR FIREWORKS OUTSHINE EVERYTHING ON EARTH NOW!

A newborn star appears like a bow among the stars.

Courtesy of ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce. The ALMA observations of the newborn star reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us.

Bigger, brighter, more powerful and exponentially more beautiful than any fireworks on earth, these fireworks in space can make July 4th fireworks feel like mere birthday cake sparklers.

A new star’s creation is observed as a brilliant burst of colors.

Young stars have been colliding and exploding since the universe began. But it is only recently that we have been able to see their fireworks, thanks to recent high-resolution images taken by Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a super powerful observatory.

An artist’s representation of a supernova appears in a red explosion surrounded by a circular ring.

While we’ve now seen many images of supernova explosions, which occur when stars die, scientists can now see clues about the early stages of star formation in the young stellar explosions captured by ALMA.

Circular clouds of dust and gas explode during the creation of new stars.

When adolescent protostars collide, cosmic fireworks ensue. ALMA’s images show interstellar explosions triggered just 500 years ago, when 100,000-year old “teenagers,” crashed together within the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 (OMC-1), about 1,500 light years from Earth.

Dramatic image of the creation of new stars appear as a giant firework explosion.

The images show blasting streams of dust, gas, and other protostars, traveling at speeds over 90 miles per second, as reported by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The explosions released as much energy equivalent to what our sun emits over the course of 10 million years.

An artist’s conception of a Gamma ray burst expressed as green gaseous clouds.

While astronomers first noticed evidence the OMC-1 eruption in 2009, it took ALMA’s power to capture high-resolution images of the cataclysmic event. Professor John Bally, of the University of Colorado, referred to the images as “a cosmic version of a fourth of July fireworks display,” in the NRAO statement.

A composite image shows the explosive nature of a star’s birth is similar to fireworks.

The Orion Molecular Cloud 1, located within the Orion constellation, is essentially baby star farm. There, as gas hundreds of times more massive than our Sun begins to collapse under its own gravity, young, protostars ignite and begin their journeys. When gravity pulls them together, they often collide and…. BOOM!

Stars appear as light trails above Chile’s Atacama desert.

ALMA is located in Chile’s Atacama desert. Its array of 66 radio antennae are extremely sensitive to the emissions from the gas and dust surrounding stars. The new images also revealed two dusty orange rings forming, with a blue spiral gas structure, indicating interplanetary interplay between two exoplanets orbiting the star.

Artist representation of the dust disk that forms around a growing planet.

These beautiful images have helped astronomers identify the presence of exoplanets and gain a better understanding of the nature of protoplanetary disks.

Gas and cosmic dust forms around a young star in this artist representation.

“The detection of dust in the early universe provides new information on when the first supernovae exploded and hence the time when the first hot stars bathed the universe in light,” ESO officials said in a statement. “Determining the timing of this ‘cosmic dawn’ is one of the holy grails of modern astronomy, and it can be indirectly probed through the study of early interstellar dust.”

The Milky Way Galaxy as seen from the ALMA Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

ALMA is the largest and fastest ground-based telescope. It was built by an international collaboration of engineers in North America, Europe, East Asia, and Chile, at a price tag of $1.3 billion. It is currently the world’s most complex astronomical instrument. It produces 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Radio waves from the Universe appear as a red blog when observed from the ALMA Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

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The heart of the Galaxy appears as a whirling red and blue gases as they circle a black hole in this artist’s representation.

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An artist created image of his impression of a dusty pink, purple and blue swirling gas galaxy.

IMAGE CREDITS:

Image: Courtesy of ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce. The ALMA observations of the newborn star reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us.
Image: Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/ALMA. Combined observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the newly completed Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile have revealed the throes of a stellar birth.
Image: by Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF). Artist's illustration of supernova 1987A reveals the cold, inner regions of the exploded star's remnants (in red) where tremendous amounts of dust were detected and imaged by ALMA.
Image: Courtesy of NASA/ESO/L ALMA. “In galactic nurseries like the Orion Nebula, clouds of gas and dust mingle, birthing new stars and planetary systems. The ALMA radio telescope made a recent observation of possible planets being born.”
Image: Courtesy of ALMA. Astronomers captured these dramatic images of the remains of a 500-year-old explosion as they explored the firework-like debris from the birth of a group of massive stars.
Image: Courtesy of NAOJ. An artist’s conception of the environment around GRB 020819B based on observations with ALMA.
Image: Courtesy of ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Bally; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); Gemini Observatory/AURA. Composite image of the OMC-1 cloud in Orion showing the explosive nature of star birth.
Image: Courtesy of ESO/B. Tafreshi (TWAN). Light from the southern constellations shines through the thin atmosphere of ALMA’s high-altitude desert site. In this time-lapse image, the stars’ movement throughout the night is visible.
Image: Courtesy of NAOJ. Artist’s impression of the dust disk and a forming planet around TW Hydrae. Astronomers found signs of a growing planet using the ALMA.
Image: Courtesy of ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. Kornmesser (ESO). An artist’s impression shows the disk of gas and cosmic dust around a young star, as observed by the ALMA telescope.
Image: Courtesy of ESO/B. Tafreshi (TWAN). Antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with the Milky Way Galaxy.
Image: Courtesy of ALMA. ALMA observes radio waves from the Universe, at the low-energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Image: Courtesy of NRAO/AUI/NSF; D. Berry/Skyworks. Artist impression of the heart of galaxy NGC 1068, which harbors an actively feeding supermassive black hole. Arising from the black hole's outer accretion disk, ALMA discovered clouds of cold molecular gas and dust.
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Image: Courtesy of ESO/M.Kornmesser. An artist’s impression of the dusty galaxy, named A2744_YD4, observed by ALMA.