ALMA

An international team of astronomers has detected the dusty remains of some of the earliest stars to shine on the universe. The light from the galaxy, known as A2744_YD4, left its source when the universe was 600 million years old - only four percent its current age.

For the human eye, staring straight into the sun is a daunting (and unwise) task. For the ALMA telescope, doing so is a walk in the park, as evidenced by a series of just-released photos. Included in the images is a close-up of a sun spot that's twice the size of our planet.

New receivers on the ALMA radio telescope in Chile have been designed to help scientists search the cosmos for water - an essential ingredient in the search for possible carbon-based extraterrestrial life

​​A team of astronomers has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe a gigantic tsunami of stars and interstellar material that has created striking eyelid-shaped formations in a distant spiral galaxy.

You've likely heard of snow lines on white mountains here on Earth. But newly forming stars have a snow line too and we usually can't see it, even with our most powerful telescopes. Thanks to one particular stellar outburst however, the line was pushed far out, allowing one telescope to capture it.

For years researchers have believed that supermassive black holes only subsisted on a diet of hot gas. New observations of a galaxy about a billion light years away though, show that cold, clumpy cosmic rain will do just fine to fill a black hole's gaping maw.

A team of astronomers working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered three planets orbiting a dwarf sun, just 40 light-years from Earth. All three worlds are potentially habitable and may be the best candidates yet in the search for life beyond our solar system.

The ALMA telescope's latest observation is one of its most impressive yet, providing us with the best ever look at a planet-forming disc. The disc is of particular note, as it includes a gap in the material at the same distance from the star as the Earth from the Sun.

The brightest galaxy ever discovered may be in the process of tearing itself apart. WISE J224607.57-052635.0 (W2246-0526) is believed to be brighter than 300 trillion Suns, however the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy could also be responsible for a drastic transformation.

A team of astronomers has made use of the ALMA telescope to observe four stasr, finding the best evidence yet of massive planets forming in the surrounding disk of dust and gas.

A team of Japanese astronomers has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to spot a group of huge, youthful galaxies in the distant Universe. The discovery helps us to understand the formation of such galaxies, and how they evolve into the elliptical galaxies we see today.

Astronomers have used the ALMA telescope to observe distant clouds of star-forming gas from just 800 million years after the Big Bang. The findings represent the first time that the objects have been seen as anything more than just faint blotches.