Multimedia Gallery - This protoplanetary disk around the young star HL Tauri is the sharpest image ever taken with ALMA.

September 13, 2016

This protoplanetary disk around the young star HL Tauri is the sharpest image ever taken with ALMA.

Each year, the MPS lecture series features esteemed researchers who speak to a diverse set of topics that span the breadth of the directorate itself. This year, among those speakers is Kelsey Johnson from the University of Virginia's astronomy department. She will ponder how the most ancient objects in the universe formed, elaborating on her own research, which has employed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The image above is an example of the science being done with ALMA. This protoplanetary disk around the young star HL Tauri is the sharpest image ever taken with ALMA. It reveals substructures that have never been seen before, including possible positions of planets forming in the dark patches within the system.

Credit: NRAO/ESO/NAOJ/AUI/NSF

Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.

Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.

Also Available:
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (26.2 KB)

Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.