Search Publications
Gas flow and accretion via spiral streamers and circumstellar disks in a young binary protostar
Caselli, P.; Segura-Cox, D.; Zhao, B. +4 more
The majority of stars are part of gravitationally bound stellar systems, such as binaries. Observations of protobinary systems constrain the conditions that lead to stellar multiplicity and subsequent orbital evolution. We report high-angular resolution observations of the circumbinary disk around [BHB2007] 11, a young binary protostar system. The…
Fast molecular outflow from a dusty star-forming galaxy in the early Universe
Béthermin, M.; Stark, A. A.; Vieira, J. D. +20 more
Galaxies grow inefficiently, with only a small percentage of the available gas converted into stars each free-fall time. Feedback processes, such as outflowing winds driven by radiation pressure, supernovae, or supermassive black hole accretion, can act to halt star formation if they heat or expel the gas supply. We report a molecular outflow laun…
Magnetic seismology of interstellar gas clouds: Unveiling a hidden dimension
Tassis, Konstantinos; Tritsis, Aris
Stars and planets are formed inside dense interstellar molecular clouds by processes imprinted on the three-dimensional (3D) morphology of the clouds. Determining the 3D structure of interstellar clouds remains challenging because of projection effects and difficulties measuring the extent of the clouds along the line of sight. We report the detec…
Old supernova dust factory revealed at the Galactic center
Morris, M. R.; Lau, R. M.; Herter, T. L. +2 more
Dust formation in supernova ejecta is currently the leading candidate to explain the large quantities of dust observed in the distant, early universe. However, it is unclear whether the ejecta-formed dust can survive the hot interior of the supernova remnant (SNR). We present infrared observations of ~0.02 solar masses of warm (~100 kelvin) dust s…
Detection of a Noble Gas Molecular Ion, 36ArH+, in the Crab Nebula
Ivison, R. J.; Olofsson, G.; Krause, O. +9 more
Noble gas molecules have not hitherto been detected in space. From spectra obtained with the Herschel Space Observatory, we report the detection of emission in the 617.5- and 1234.6-gigahertz J = 1-0 and 2-1 rotational lines of 36ArH+ at several positions in the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant known to contain both molecular…
Herschel Detects a Massive Dust Reservoir in Supernova 1987A
van Loon, J. Th.; Lundqvist, P.; Okumura, K. +20 more
We report far-infrared and submillimeter observations of supernova 1987A, the star whose explosion was observed on 23 February 1987 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy located 160,000 light years away. The observations reveal the presence of a population of cold dust grains radiating with a temperature of about 17 to 23 kelvin at a rate of abo…
Detection of the Water Reservoir in a Forming Planetary System
Cleeves, L. Ilsedore; Bergin, Edwin A.; van Dishoeck, Ewine F. +12 more
Icy bodies may have delivered the oceans to the early Earth, yet little is known about water in the ice-dominated regions of extrasolar planet-forming disks. The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared on board the Herschel Space Observatory has detected emission lines from both spin isomers of cold water vapor from the disk around the young st…
The Detection of a Population of Submillimeter-Bright, Strongly Lensed Galaxies
Smail, I.; Rodighiero, G.; Valtchanov, I. +86 more
Gravitational lensing is a powerful astrophysical and cosmological probe and is particularly valuable at submillimeter wavelengths for the study of the statistical and individual properties of dusty star-forming galaxies. However, the identification of gravitational lenses is often time-intensive, involving the sifting of large volumes of imaging …