Pair of massive baby stars swaddled in salty water vapor

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers spotted a pair of massive baby stars growing in salty cosmic soup.

Each star is shrouded by a gaseous disk which includes molecules of sodium chloride, commonly known as table salt, and heated water vapor. Analyzing the radio emissions from the salt and water, the team found that the disks are counter rotating.

This is the second detection of salt around massive young stars, promising that salt is an excellent marker to explore the immediate surroundings of giant baby stars.

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Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Tanaka et al.

ALMA composite image of a binary massive protostar IRAS 16547-4247.

Different colors show the different distributions of dust particles (yellow), methyl cyanide (CH3CN, red), salt (NaCl, green), and hot water vapor (H2O, blue).

Bottom insets are the close-up views of each components. Dust and methyl cyanide are distributed widely around the binary, whereas salt and water vapor are concentrated in the disk around each protostar.

In the wide-field image, the jets from one of the protostars, seen as several dots in the above image, are shown in light blue.


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Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Alves et al.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have captured a stunning image of two circumstellar disks in which two protostars are growing, fed by a complex network of filaments of gas and dust.

This ALMA image shows the binary protostar [BHB2007] 11.

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The two circumstellar disks in [BHB2007] 11 are surrounded by a bigger disk with a total mass of about 80 Jupiter masses, which displays a complex network of dust structures distributed in spiral shapes.