Latest Submillimetre astronomy Stories

NEWTON, N.C., Sept. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies is partnering with Stratosat Datacom (Pty) Ltd. to supply 64 radio-telescope antennas, ancillary electronic components and support for South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope program. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120906/PH69591 ) The Stratosat/General Dynamics SATCOM consortium will perform a minimum of 75 percent of the work on the 632 million rand ($75 million) contract in South Africa...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers using a telescope at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan have discovered a molecular cloud that has a peculiar helical structure. The team, led by Shinji Matsumura, a second year Ph. D. candidate, named it a "pigtail" molecular cloud due to its morphology. The pigtail molecular cloud is located in the galactic center, about 30,000 light years away from the solar system. Giant molecular clouds found in this...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Images from the telescope have revealed millions of dusty black hole candidates across the universe and about 1,000 even dustier objects thought to be among the brightest galaxies ever...

[ Watch Video 1 ] | [ Watch Video 2 ] | Watch Video 3 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have made a crucial step towards a scientific goal by observing the heart of a distant quasar with angular resolution. An international team of astronomers connected radio telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and Arizona for the first time using the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), enabling them to make the sharpest observation ever of the center of a...

Using an array of radio telescopes, researchers from Europe and Japan have discovered a submillimeter galaxy -- a type of galaxy that has intense star formation activity and is covered by large amounts of dust -- located approximately 12.4 billion light-years away. The international team of experts, which was led by Kyoto University Associate Professor Tohru Nagao, used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in southern Chile to locate the galaxy, the researchers announced...

A new image of the center of the distinctive galaxy Centaurus A, made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows how the new telescope, which is still under construction, allows astronomers to see with unprecedented quality through the opaque dust lanes that obscure the galaxy's center. Centaurus A is a massive elliptical radio galaxy (a galaxy that emits strong radio waves) and is the most prominent, as well as the nearest, radio galaxy in the sky. Its very...

[ Watch the Video ] Astronomers have made a breakthrough discovery in understanding a nearby planetary system, giving clues about how these systems form and evolve. Scientists used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to find that planets orbiting the star Fomalhaut must be smaller than originally thought. The high-resolution images show that both the inner and outer edges of the thin, dusty disk have very sharp edges.  This, as well as computer simulations, have...

NEWTON, N.C., Oct. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Thirteen 12-meter antennas manufactured by General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies have been successfully installed at the 16,500-foot-high Chajnantor plateau in Chile, home to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) astronomical observatory. Located in the Andes mountains, the 115-ton, highly specialized antennas form part of an 11-mile-wide international astronomy project. When it is completed in 2013, scientists will use the...

[ Watch the Video ] Astronomers have opened up its doors to a new ground-base telescope that will help give scientists a peak at the places that have never been explored. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has released an image of a merging pair of galaxies as part of its grand opening. ALMA is the largest and most expensive radio observatory on Earth and was funded by several different space agencies. Radio observatories collect tiny waves given off by the...

   Chalk up one more feat for Saturn's intriguing moon Enceladus. The small, dynamic moon spews out dramatic plumes of water vapor and ice -- first seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2005. It possesses simple organic particles and may house liquid water beneath its surface. Its geyser-like jets create a gigantic halo of ice, dust and gas around Enceladus that helps feed Saturn's E ring. Now, thanks again to those icy jets, Enceladus is the only moon in our solar system known to...