Astronomers identify gas spirals as a nursery of twin stars through ALMA observation
Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - 07:30
in Astronomy & Space
With the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observation, astronomers led by Shigehisa Takakuwa, Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (ASIAA), Taiwan, found spiral arms of molecular gas and dust around the "baby twin" stars, binary protostars. Gas motions to supply materials to the twin were also identified. These observational results unveil, for the first time, the mechanism of the birth and growth of binary stars, which are ubiquitous throughout the universe. The study was published on November 20 in The Astrophysical Journal.