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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…