Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2016

13 MAY-JUNE 2016 SPACE CHRONICLES disk appears and how it evolves. Lack of sensitivity and resolution in radio observations has made it difficult to observe these pheno- mena. “The disks around young stars are the places where planets will be formed,” said Aso, the lead author of the paper that appeared in The Astrophysical Journal . “To under- stand the formation mechanism of a disk, we need to differentiate the disk from the outer envelope precisely and pinpoint the location of its boundary.” Using ALMA, the team directly observed the bound- I n the background, an artist’s im- pression of the baby star TMC-1A. The star is located in the center and surrounded by a rotating gas disk. Gas is infalling to the disk from the envelope further out. Below, the animation of the same scene. [NAOJ]