Go Back   IceInSpace > General Astronomy > Astronomy and Amateur Science

Reply
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread
  #1  
Old 08-11-2017, 04:47 PM
gary
Registered User

gary is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Mt. Kuring-Gai
Posts: 5,914
Post ALMA detects eight chemically-rich molecular clouds in NGC 253

In a 6 Nov 2017 press release from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have found eight molecular clouds in the galaxy NGC 253 in Sculptor.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ALMA
Among eight clouds identified at the center of the galaxy NGC 253, one exhibits very complex chemical composition, while in the other clouds many signals are missing. This chemical richness and diversity shed light on the nature of the baby boom galaxy.

Ryo Ando, a graduate student of the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues observed the galaxy NGC 253 and for the first time, they resolved the locations of star formation in this galaxy down to the scale of a molecular cloud, which is a star formation site with a size of about 30 light-years. As a result, they identified eight massive, dusty clouds aligned along the center of the galaxy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ALMA

One of the clouds stood out with its extremely rich chemical composition. The team identified footprints of 19 different molecules in the cloud, such as thioformaldehyde (H2CS), propyne (CH3CCH), and complex organic molecules including methanol (CH3OH) and acetic acid (CH3COOH). “The data are filled with the signals of various molecules,” said Ando. “It is like a forest of molecules.”

Many “molecular forests” have been found in our Milky Way Galaxy, but this is the first example outside the Milky Way. Researchers assume that the molecular jungle is an aggregate of dense and warm cocoons around bright baby stars. The cocoon gas is heated from inside by hundreds of young stars and a myriad of chemical reactions is driven to form various molecules.
Certainly something to ponder next time you observe NGC 253!

Article here :-
http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/pr...orming-galaxy/

Paper at arXiv "Diverse nuclear star-forming activities in the heart of NGC 253 resolved with ten-pc scale ALMA images" by Ando et. al :-
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.01432.pdf
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +10. The time is now 06:11 PM.

Powered by vBulletin Version 3.8.7 | Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Advertisement
Bintel
Advertisement
Testar
Advertisement