Three articles accepted for publication in the journal “Astronomy and Astrophysics” describe as many research on star systems in formation. The research were conducted by different teams of astronomers but have in common the use of the SPHERE instrument mounted on ESO’s VLT (Very Large Telescope), which revealed details never seen before of protoplanetary discs around the young stars RX J1615, HD 97048 and HD 135344B.
An article accepted for publication in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” describes a research on the large columnar structures in the Carina Nebula. A team led by Anna McLeod, a PhD student at ESO, used the MUSE instrument installed on ESO’s VLT (Very Large Telescope) to examine these structures that have been nicknamed “pillars of destruction” for certain similarities with the “Pillars of Creation” photographed by the Hubble space telescope.
An article to be published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes an investigation into the glowing gas clouds around distant quasars. An international team of astronomers led by a group at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich, Switzerland, used the MUSE instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to look at very distant galaxies that are active, of the type called quasar, and discovered that the gas halos that surround them are more common than expected.
An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” describes the discovery of the relics of an ancient globular cluster in the Milky Way’s central area. A team of astronomers led by Dante Minniti (Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile) and Rodrigo Contreras Ramos (Instituto Milenio de Astrofísica, Santiago, Chile) used observations from the “Variables in the Via Lactea with VISTA” (VVV) survey carried out with ESO’s VISTA telescope to discover the ancient stars of type RR Lyrae for the first time in that area.
A series of articles to be published in “Astrophysical Journal” and “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” describe different parts of a research based on the observation of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) using the radio telescope ALMA. These observations show that the rate of star formation in young galaxies is closely related to their total mass in stars.
