Software engineers have been hard at work to establish a common language for a global conversation. The topic—revealing the mysteries of the Universe. The U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) has been collaborating with U.S. and international astronomy institutions to establish a new open-source, standardized format for processing radio astronomical data, enabling interoperability between scientific institutions worldwide.
Tucked away in a star forming region in the Taurus constellation, a pair of circling stars are displaying some unexpected differences in the circumstellar disks of dust and gas that surround them.
Astronomers have made groundbreaking discoveries about young star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), along with observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, gives new insight into the early stages of massive star formation outside our galaxy.
New observations from the National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NSF NRAO) Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (NSF VLA) provide compelling evidence supporting a universal mechanism for the collimation of astrophysical jets, regardless of their origin.Â
A groundbreaking discovery has revealed the presence of a blazar—a supermassive black hole with a jet pointed directly at Earth—at an extraordinary redshift of 7.0. The object, designated VLASS J041009.05â’013919.88 (J0410â’0139), is the most distant blazar ever identified, providing a rare glimpse into the epoch of reionization when the universe was less than 800 million years old.
A new agreement between the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) will help the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) take its next steps – into space.
The EHT made headlines around the world in 2019 after it took the first images of a black hole, and then in 2022, imaged the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy. The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) mission would extend this work by combining several of NRAO’s ground-based radio antennas with a space-based telescope to produce the most detailed images in history. BHEX would allow scientists to reveal the light that orbits the edge of a black hole before it escapes, known as a photon ring.
NGC 1068 is a well-known, relatively nearby, bright galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center. Despite its status as a popular target for astronomers, however, its accretion disk is obscured by thick clouds of dust and gas. A few light-years in diameter, the outer accretion disk is dotted by hundreds of distinct water maser sources that hinted for decades at deeper structures. Masers are distinct beacons of electromagnetic radiation that shine in microwave or radio wavelengths; in radio astronomy, water masers observed at a frequency of 22 GHz are particularly useful because they can shine through much of the dust and gas that obscures optical wavelengths.
Led by astronomer Jack Gallimore of Bucknell University, an international team of astronomers and students set out to observe NGC 1068 with twin goals in mind: astrometric mapping of the galaxy’s radio continuum and measurements of polarization for its water masers. “NGC 1068 is a bit of a VIP among active galaxies,”
New observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) suggest that planet formation can occur even in harsh stellar environments previously thought to be inhospitable.An international team of astronomers used ALMA to capture high-resolution images of eight protoplanetary disks in the Sigma Orionis cluster, which is irradiated by intense ultraviolet light from a massive nearby star.
The element carbon is a building block for life, both on Earth and potentially elsewhere in the vast reaches of space. There should be a lot of carbon in space, but surprisingly, it's not always easy to find. While it can be observed in many places, it doesn’t add up to the volume astronomers would expect to see. The discovery of a new, complex molecule (1-cyanopyrene), challenges these expectations, about where the building blocks for carbon are found, and how they evolve. This research was published today in the journal Science.
Traditionally, planet formation has been described as a “bottom-up” process, as dust grains gradually collect into bigger conglomerations over tens of millions of years: from microns, to centimeters, to meters, to kilometers.
Astronomers learn about the universe by pointing their telescopes to the sky. But what happens when a satellite comes between them and the cosmological objects they hope to study?
Socorro, NM – The US National Science Foundation (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (NSF VLA) have played a pivotal role in uncovering the origins of persistent emissions observed in some fast radio bursts (FRBs). An international team of astronomers has demonstrated that this persistent radiation originates from a plasma bubble, shedding new light on the enigmatic sources powering these cosmic phenomena.
An international team of astronomers have used a powerful array of radio telescopes to discover new insights about a magnetar that’s only a few hundred years old. By capturing precise measurements of the magnetar’s position and velocity, new clues emerge regarding its developmental path. When a relatively high-mass star collapses at the end of its life and explodes as a supernova, it can leave behind a superdense star called a neutron star.
Towards the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, in the constellation Sagittarius, astronomers have discovered 10 monstrous neutron stars. Astronomers already knew that 39 pulsars call Terzan 5 home.
At the 244th American Astronomical Society meeting, researchers presented groundbreaking findings on planet formation in circumstellar disks around young binary stars
Exploring the ongoing potential of the technical overlap between astronomy and medicine, experts from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the medical imaging field presented to an audience of around 2,000 at the prestigious International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) Conference in Singapore.
An unusual group of stars in the Orion constellation have revealed their secrets. FU Orionis, a double star system, first caught astronomers’ attention in 1936 when the central star suddenly became 1,000 times brighter than usual.
Astronomers have discovered the secrets of a starburst galaxy producing new stars at a rate much faster than our Milk Way. This research revealed many different molecules, more than ever seen before in a galaxy like this.
Pocahontas County, West Virginia residents are set to experience a transformative shift in their internet connectivity, as the state of West Virginia announces substantial developments in the broadband infrastructure.
The Universe is almost inconceivably vast. So is the amount of data astronomers collect when they study it. This is a challenging process for the scientists and engineers at the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). But what if they could do it over 300 times faster?
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