The RAS invites applications for a new series of grants and prizes for student involvement in instrumentation, in both astronomy and geophysics.

Funded by a generous donation from the Patricia Tomkins Foundation, the following awards are available:

• The Tomkins Thesis Prize of £1,000, awarded for the best PhD thesis related to astronomical or geophysical instrumentation submitted in the previous 12 months.
• The Tomkins Undergraduate Prize of £500, awarded for laboratory work on instrumentation by an undergraduate student.
• Tomkins Instrumentation Grants of up to £2,000 for new laboratory experiments or developments in the field of instrumentation, to be undertaken by undergraduate or postgraduate students. Applications should use the normal RAS grants form, but be labelled as 'Tomkins Instrumentation Grant'.

More details on the awards and how to apply are available. The deadline for receipt of nominations is 31 May 2013. The winners will be announced during the 2013 National Astronomy Meeting in July.

The results of the 2013 RAS elections were announced at the Annual General Meeting of the society on 10 May. The following Fellows were elected to serve on Council, the governing body of the society:

President

Prof. Martin Barstow, elected as the next President of the RASProf. Martin Barstow

Martin Barstow is Professor of Astrophysics and Space Science at the University of Leicester. He has served on the RAS Council from 2005-2013, originally as a councillor and later as Astronomy Secretary. Prof. Barstow's research interests are in white dwarfs, the local interstellar medium, and UV instrumentation. He is also involved in outreach and science policy, for example serving on STFC Council and advisory boards for the UK and European Space Agencies.

Prof. Barstow will serve for one year as President Elect before succeeding the current President, Prof. David Southwood, in May 2014.

Vice Presidents

Prof. Gillian Foulger (G)

Dr Andrew Norton (A)

The vice presidents will serve terms of two years.

Secretary

Mandy Bailey (A)

The secretary will serve a term of up to five years.

Councillors

Prof. John Brown (G)

Dr Sarah Matthews (G)

Prof. Paul Murdin (A)

Prof. Peter Coles (A)

The councillors will serve terms of three years, except for Prof. Coles who will serve for one year only.

(A) denotes the fields of astronomy (including cosmology, astrobiology, cosmochemistry, astroparticle physics, computational astrophysics etc.)

(G) denotes the fields of geophysics (including geophysical fluid dynamics, planetary sciences, solar-terrestrial physics etc.)

More details and policy statements from the candidates who took part in the elections are available.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has found signs of Earth-like planets in an unlikely place: the atmospheres of a pair of burnt-out stars in a nearby star cluster. The white dwarf stars are being polluted by debris from asteroid-like objects falling onto them. This discovery suggests that rocky planet assembly is common in clusters, say researchers. The scientists publish their results in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

An artist's impression of the thin, rocky debris disc discovered around the two Hyades white dwarfs. Rocky asteroids are thought to have been perturbed by planets within the system and diverted inwards towards the star, where they broke up, circled into a debris ring, and were then dragged onto the star itself. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, and G. Bacon (STScI). Click for a larger imageThe stars, known as white dwarfs — small, dim remnants of stars once like the Sun — reside 150 light-years away in the Hyades star cluster, in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull). The cluster is relatively young, at only 625 million years old.

Astronomers believe that all stars formed in clusters. However, searches for planets in these clusters have not been fruitful — of the roughly 800 exoplanets known, only four are known to orbit stars in clusters. This scarcity may be due to the nature of the cluster stars, which are young and active, producing stellar flares and other outbursts that make it difficult to study them in detail.

A new study led by Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge, UK, instead observed “retired” cluster stars to hunt for signs of planet formation.

Hubble's spectroscopic observations identified silicon in the atmospheres of two white dwarfs, a major ingredient of the rocky material that forms Earth and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System. This silicon may have come from asteroids that were shredded by the white dwarfs’ gravity when they veered too close to the stars. The rocky debris likely formed a ring around the dead stars, which then funnelled the material inwards.

The debris detected whirling around the white dwarfs suggests that terrestrial planets formed when these stars were born. After the stars collapsed to form white dwarfs, surviving gas giant planets may have gravitationally nudged members of any leftover asteroid belts into star-grazing orbits.

“We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets,” says Farihi. “When these stars were born, they built planets, and there’s a good chance that they currently retain some of them. The signs of rocky debris we are seeing are evidence of this — it is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our Solar System.”

Besides finding silicon in the Hyades stars’ atmospheres, Hubble also detected low levels of carbon. This is another sign of the rocky nature of the debris, as astronomers know that carbon levels should be very low in rocky, Earth-like material. Finding its faint chemical signature required Hubble's powerful Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), as carbon's fingerprints can be detected only in ultraviolet light, which cannot be observed from ground-based telescopes.

“The one thing the white dwarf pollution technique gives us that we won’t get with any other planet detection technique is the chemistry of solid planets,” Farihi says. “Based on the silicon-to-carbon ratio in our study, for example, we can actually say that this material is basically Earth-like.”

This new study suggests that asteroids less than 160 kilometres across were gravitationally torn apart by the white dwarfs’ strong tidal forces, before eventually falling onto the dead stars.

The team plans to analyse more white dwarfs using the same technique to identify not only the rocks’ composition, but also their parent bodies. “The beauty of this technique is that whatever the Universe is doing, we’ll be able to measure it,” Farihi said. “We have been using the Solar System as a kind of map, but we don’t know what the rest of the Universe does. Hopefully with Hubble and its powerful ultraviolet-light spectrograph COS, and with the upcoming ground-based 30- and 40-metre telescopes, we’ll be able to tell more of the story.”

Science contacts

Jay Farihi
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
Tel: +44 (0)12 2333 0896      
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Media contacts

Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3307      
Mob: +44 (0)794 124 8035      
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Nicky Guttridge
ESA/Hubble
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6855
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Images and animations

Images and animations with captions can be downloaded from
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1309/

Further information

The international team of astronomers in this study consists of J. Farihi (University of Cambridge, UK; STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow), B. T. Gänsicke (University of Warwick, UK), and D. Koester (University of Kiel, Germany).

Their work appears in “Evidence of Rocky Planetesimals Orbiting Two Hyades Stars”, J. Farihi, B. T. Gänsicke, D. Koester, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Oxford University Press, in press. The paper is available at http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/23/mnras.stt432.full. A preprint can be seen at
http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1309.pdf

Notes for editors

The two “polluted” Hyades white dwarfs are part of a search of planetary debris around more than 100 white dwarfs, led by Boris Gänsicke of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Using computer models of white dwarf atmospheres, Detlev Koester from the University of Kiel in Germany is determining the abundances of various elements that can be traced to planets in the COS data.

Seeing evidence of asteroids points to the possibility of Earth-sized planets in the same system. Asteroids are the building blocks of major planets. Planet-forming processes are inefficient, and spawn many times more small bodies than large bodies — but once rocky embryos the size of asteroids are built, planets are sure to follow.

The team estimated the size of the infalling asteroids by measuring the amount of dust being gobbled up by the stars — about 10 million grams per second, equal to the flow rate of a small river. They then compared that data with measurements of material falling onto other white dwarfs.

The Hyades study offers insight into what will happen in the Solar System when the Sun burns out, five billion years from now.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

Follow the RAS on Twitter via @royalastrosoc

The regular digest of upcoming space and astronomy news events, from the RAS. May sees the 193rd Annual General Meeting of the Society, where the results of the elections for our President and Council will be announced; discussion meetings on galaxy morphology and moons in the Solar system and the latest launch of astronauts to the International Space Station.

3/4 May: Launch of Proba-V mission

Artist's impression of the Proba-V satellite in orbit. Credit: ESA - P. Carril, 2012The European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft Proba-V is set to launch at 0306 BST (0206 GMT) on 4 May. Proba-V will be carried aloft by a Vega rocket from the Kourou launch site in French Guiana (the local time of the launch will be 2306 on 3 May), travelling to an orbit 820 km above the surface of the Earth.

Once deployed, Proba-V will map land cover and vegetation growth across the whole Earth every two days. Amongst other applications, this will help scientists to monitor land use, classify vegetation, monitor crops and predict famine.

ESA: Proba-V
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Technology/Proba_Missions/About_Proba-V

10 May: RAS Specialist Discussion Meeting: Galaxy Morphology in the Era of Large Surveys: Geological Society, Burlington House, London

10 May will see astronomers gather at the Geological Society, for a specialist discussion meeting on new scientific findings resulting from the study of the shapes (morphologies) of galaxies.

Delegates at the meeting will discuss new insights into star formation history, chemical composition and movement of stars. Many of these results were obtained by the analysis of large data sets through the Galaxy Zoo project, which harnesses the efforts of thousands of volunteers to classify the shapes of millions of galaxies, work of vital importance to research astronomers in this field.

Galaxy Morphology in the Era of Large Surveys
http://ras2013.galaxyzoo.org/

Bona fide members of the media who wish to attend this meeting should present their credentials at the registration desk for free admission.

Media contact

Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3307 x214
Mob: +44 (0)794 1124 8035
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10 May: RAS Specialist Discussion Meeting: Observation, Evolution and Origin of Planetary Satellites: Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, London

The last decade has seen an explosion in the number of known natural satellites in the Solar system. Using ground- and space-based telescopes and space probes such as Cassini-Huygens, these objects (more commonly thought of as ‘moons’) have been discovered to be in orbit around planets, dwarf planets and asteroids and to be embedded in planetary ring systems.

On 10 May, planetary scientists will gather at the Royal Astronomical Society for a special discussion meeting on the latest results in this area. Delegates will consider the processes that affect moons over time and discuss concepts for future space missions to these intriguing worlds.

Observation, Evolution and Origin of Planetary Satellites
http://ph.qmul.ac.uk/observation-evolution-and-origin-planetary-satellites

Bona fide members of the media who wish to attend this meeting should present their credentials at the registration desk for free admission.

Media contact
Robert Massey
(details above)

10 May: 193rd Annual General Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society

The 193rd Annual General Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society will take place at 4 p.m. on 10 May. Open to Fellows of the RAS, the AGM will include the announcement of the results of the RAS Presidential and Council elections. The winning presidential candidate will become President-Elect, taking over as President for a two year term from May 2014.

Media contact
Robert Massey
(details above)

14 May: RAS Public Lecture: The Search for Gravity Waves, Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, London

The latest RAS Public Lecture will be given by Prof. Mike Cruise of the University of Birmingham at 1 p.m. on 14 May. In his talk, Prof. Cruise will describe how gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein in the General Theory of Relativity he presented in 1915, could provide astronomers with an entirely new way of observing the universe.

With instruments now under development on the ground and in space, it should be possible to detect gravitational waves from systems such as two black holes in orbit around one another and from the collisions of neutron stars.

RAS public lectures
https://www.ras.org.uk/events-and-meetings/public-lectures

Media contact
Robert Massey
(details above)

28 May: Launch of Soyuz TMA09-M (mission ISS 35S) to the International Space Station (ISS)

The spacecraft Soyuz TMA 09-M is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 28 May. The Soyuz vehicle will carry the Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, US astronaut Karen Nyberg and Italian Luca Parmitano to the ISS, where they will join three crew members already on board the space outpost.

Russian Federal Space Agency
http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?lang=en

NASA
http://www.nasa.gov

Night sky in May

Information on stars, planets, comets, meteor showers and other celestial phenomena is available from the British Astronomical Association (BAA), the Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA) and the Jodrell Bank night sky guide.

BAA
http://www.britastro.org

SPA
http://www.popastro.com

The Night Sky: Jodrell Bank
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky/

Notes for editors

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

Follow the RAS on Twitter via @royalastrosoc

The 193rd Annual General Meeting of the RAS will be held in the lecture theatre of the Geological Society, Burlington House, London, on 10th May 2013 at 16:00. It is open to Fellows and RAS staff only.

The AGM is the opportunity for the Fellows to discuss and determine matters relating to the affairs the society. It deals with important business including the election of Council, determination of membership subscription rates, reports from the trustees, auditors and honorary auditors, and any revisions to the society's bye-laws.

The agenda and reports are available in the Fellows-only section of the website, and have also been emailed to all Fellows. You may need to register to access the restricted part of the website.

Note that to vote in the election Fellows should use the unique link which they have been emailed. If you have lost this or never received it, please contact the membership secretary.

Astronomers have released a new image of the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse – one of the nearest red supergiants to Earth – revealing the detailed structure of the matter being thrown off the star.

The new e-MERLIN radio image of Betelgeuse. The image is 1 arcsecond on a side, north is up and east is to the left. The observed frequency is 5.5-6.0 GHz and the resolution is about 60 milliarcarcseconds. The colours represent brightness ranging from red at the faintest to white at the brightest. The visual size of the star is overlaid as a black circle. Credit: University of Manchester. Click for a larger image.The new image, taken by the e-MERLIN radio telescope array operated from the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, also shows regions of surprisingly hot gas in the star’s outer atmosphere and a cooler arc of gas weighing almost as much as the Earth. The scientists publish their results in a paper in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Betelgeuse is easily visible to the unaided eye as the bright, red star on the top left shoulder of Orion the Hunter. The star itself is huge – 1,000 times larger than our Sun – but at a distance of about 650 light years it still appears as a tiny dot in the sky, so special techniques combining telescopes in arrays are required to see details of the star and the region around it.

The new e-MERLIN image of Betelgeuse shows its atmosphere extends out to five times the size of the visual surface of the star. It reveals two hot spots within the outer atmosphere and a faint arc of cool gas even farther out beyond the radio surface of the star.

The hot spots appear on opposite sides of the star, separated by about half the visual diameter of the star. They have a temperature of about 4,000-5,000 Kelvin, much higher than the average temperature of the radio surface of the star (about 1,200 Kelvin) and even higher than the visual surface (3,600 Kelvin).  The arc of cool gas lies almost 7.4 billion kilometres away from the star – about the same distance as the farthest Pluto gets from the Sun. It is estimated to have a mass almost two thirds that of the Earth and a temperature of about 150 Kelvin.

Lead author Dr Anita Richards, from The University of Manchester, said that it was not yet clear why the hot spots are so hot. She said: “One possibility is that shock waves, caused either by the star pulsating or by convection in its outer layers, are compressing and heating the gas. Another is that the outer atmosphere is patchy and we are seeing through to hotter regions within. The arc of cool gas is thought to be the result of a period of increased mass loss from the star at some point in the last century but its relationship to structures like the hot spots, which lie much closer in, within the star’s outer atmosphere, is unknown.”

The mechanism by which supergiant stars like Betelgeuse lose matter into space is not well understood despite its key role in the lifecycle of matter, enriching the interstellar material from which future stars and planets will form. Detailed high-resolution studies of the regions around massive stars like the ones presented here are essential to improving our understanding.

Dr Richards, who is based in Manchester’s School of Physics and Astronomy, added: “Betelgeuse produces a wind equivalent to losing the mass of the Earth every three years, enriched with the chemicals that will go into the next generation of star and planet formation.  The full details of how these cool, evolved stars launch their winds is one of the remaining big questions in stellar astronomy.

“This is the first direct image showing hot spots so far from the centre of the star. We are continuing radio and microwave observations to help decide which mechanisms are most important in driving the stellar wind and producing these hot spots. This won't just tell us how the elements that form the building blocks of life are being returned to space, it will also help determine how long it is before Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova.”

Science contacts

Dr Tim O’Brien
Associate Director
Jodrell Bank Observatory
University of Manchester
Tel: +44 (0)161 275 4165
Mob: +44 (0)7963 624 162
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Dr Anita Richard
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics
University of Manchester
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Media contacts

Aeron Haworth
Media Relations
Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
The University of Manchester
Tel: +44 (0)161 275 8387
Mob: +44 (0)7717 881563
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Dr Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3307 x214
Mob: +44 (0)794 124 8035
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Images and captions

Figure 1
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/2013/Betelgeuse/Figure1.png
The constellation of Orion is visible to the left of the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank. Betelgeuse is the star at the top left of Orion. The inset shows the new e-MERLIN image of Betelgeuse. Credit: University of Manchester, Anthony Holloway.

Figure 2
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/2013/Betelgeuse/Figure2.jpg
The constellation of Orion is visible to the left of the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank. Betelgeuse is the star at the top left of Orion. Credit: Anthony Holloway, University of Manchester.

Figure 3
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/2013/Betelgeuse/Figure3.png
The new e-MERLIN radio image of Betelgeuse. The image is 1 arcsecond on a side, north is up and east is to the left. The observed frequency is 5.5-6.0 GHz and the resolution is about 60 milliarcseconds. The colours represent brightness ranging from red at the faintest to white at the brightest. Credit: University of Manchester

Figure 4
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/2013/Betelgeuse/Figure4.png
The e-MERLIN radio image of Betelgeuse with the visual size of the star overlaid as a black circle (diameter 45 milliarcseconds). Credit: University of Manchester

Figure 5
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/2013/Betelgeuse/Figure5.png
The e-MERLIN radio image of Betelgeuse with the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune scaled to this distance (200 parsecs or 650 light years) overlaid as grey circles. Credit: University of Manchester

Further information

The new work appears in “e-MERLIN resolves Betelgeuse at λ 5 cm: hotspots at 5 R⋆”, A. M. S. Richards et al, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The paper is available online at http://mnrasl.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/23/mnrasl.slt036. A preprint is available at http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/1303.2864

Notes for editors

e-MERLIN, the UK’s national radio astronomy facility, is operated from the Jodrell Bank Observatory by The University of Manchester on behalf of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. Its power lies in its combination of the sharpness of view afforded by telescope separations of up to 217km, and its ability to detect very faint signals resulting from the array’s high bandwidth optical fibre connections. By connecting seven large radio telescopes, stretching from Cambridge to Cheshire (including the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank), e-MERLIN is able to produce images with the same detail as the Hubble Space Telescope but at radio rather than visible wavelengths. The signals from the telescopes are brought to Jodrell Bank on a dedicated optical fibre network whose high bandwidth allows the detection of very faint sources of radio emission. At Jodrell Bank 210 Gb of data arrive from the seven telescopes each second. These signals are combined in the correlator, a specialised supercomputer which synchronises the signals from each telescope at a level of one million millionth of a second, carrying out one thousand million million operations per second.

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

Follow the RAS on Twitter via @royalastrosoc

Elections for President and Councillors of the RAS are now open.

The RAS Council is the governing body of the Society, and is led by the President. In 2013, elections are being held for the position of President and four Councillors. In addition, two Vice-Presidents and a Secretary are being elected unopposed.

Full details of the nominees are available, along with further information regarding the conduct of the ballot.

Ballot papers have been sent by post and email to all Fellows – please vote and have your say in the running of the Society!

Electronic votes must be received by 12 noon on 9 May 2013, and paper votes by the start of the Annual General Meeting on 10 May 2013. If you don't receive your ballot papers by Monday 15 April then please contact the Membership Secretary.

A team of astronomers has used the new ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) telescope to pinpoint the locations of over 100 of the most fertile star-forming galaxies in the early Universe. ALMA is so powerful that, in just a few hours, it captured as many observations of these galaxies as have been made by all similar telescopes worldwide over a span of more than a decade. The scientists publish their results in papers in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Astrophysical Journal.

This image shows six of the galaxies as seen in the sharp new observations by ALMA (in red). The big red circles indicate the regions where galaxies had been detected by APEX. The earlier telescope did not have sharp enough images to pin down the identity of the galaxies, many candidates appear in each circle. The ALMA observations, at submillimetre wavelengths, are overlaid on an infrared view of the region as seen by the IRAC camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope (coloured blue). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO), J. Hodge et al., A. Weiss et al., NASA Spitzer Science Center. Click for a larger image.The most fertile bursts of star birth in the early Universe took place in distant galaxies containing lots of cosmic dust. These galaxies are of key importance to our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution over the history of the Universe, but the dust obscures them and makes them difficult to identify with visible-light telescopes. To pick them out, astronomers must use telescopes that observe light at longer wavelengths, around one millimetre, such as ALMA.

“Astronomers have waited for data like this for over a decade. ALMA is so powerful that it has revolutionised the way that we can observe these galaxies, even though the telescope was not fully completed at the time of the observations,” said Jacqueline Hodge (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Germany), lead author of the paper presenting the ALMA observations.

The best map so far of these distant dusty galaxies was made using the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX). It surveyed a patch of the sky about the size of the full Moon, and detected 126 such galaxies. But, in the APEX images, each burst of star formation appeared as a relatively fuzzy blob, which may be so broad that it covered more than one galaxy in sharper images made at other wavelengths. Without knowing exactly which of the galaxies are forming the stars, astronomers were hampered in their study of star formation in the early Universe.

Pinpointing the correct galaxies requires sharper observations, and sharper observations require a bigger telescope. While APEX has a single 12-metre-diameter dish-shaped antenna, telescopes such as ALMA use multiple APEX-like dishes spread over wide distances. The signals from all the antennas are combined, and the effect is like that of a single, giant telescope as wide as the whole array of antennas.

The team used ALMA to observe the galaxies from the APEX map during ALMA’s first phase of scientific observations, with the telescope still under construction. Using less than a quarter of the final complement of 66 antennas, spread over distances of up to 125 metres, ALMA needed just two minutes per galaxy to pinpoint each one within a tiny region 200 times smaller than the broad APEX blobs, and with three times the sensitivity. ALMA is so much more sensitive than other telescopes of its kind that, in just a few hours, it doubled the total number of such observations ever made.

Not only could the team unambiguously identify which galaxies had regions of active star formation, but in up to half the cases they found that multiple star-forming galaxies had been blended into a single blob in the previous observations. ALMA’s sharp vision enabled them to distinguish the separate galaxies.

“We previously thought the brightest of these galaxies were forming stars a thousand times more vigorously than our own galaxy, the Milky Way, putting them at risk of blowing themselves apart. The ALMA images revealed multiple, smaller galaxies forming stars at somewhat more reasonable rates,” said Alexander Karim (Durham University, United Kingdom), a member of the team and lead author of a companion paper on this work.

The results form the first statistically reliable catalogue of dusty star-forming galaxies in the early Universe, and provide a vital foundation for further investigations of these galaxies’ properties at different wavelengths, without risk of misinterpretation due to the galaxies appearing blended together.

Despite ALMA’s sharp vision and unrivalled sensitivity, telescopes such as APEX still have a role to play. “APEX can cover a wide area of the sky faster than ALMA, and so it’s ideal for discovering these galaxies. Once we know where to look, we can use ALMA to locate them exactly,” concluded Ian Smail (Durham University, United Kingdom), co-author of the new paper.

Science contacts

Jacqueline Hodge
Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie
Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 6221 528 467
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Alexander Karim
Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University
Durham, United Kingdom
Tel: +49 228 733658 (Christina Stein-Schmitz)
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Mark Swinbank
Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University
Durham, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 191 334 3772 (Lindsay Borrero)
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Media contact

Richard Hook
ESO, Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Mob: +49 151 1537 3591
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Images and captions

A full set of images will be available from the ESO website http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1318/ after the embargo expires.

Further information

This research was presented in the paper “An ALMA Survey of Submillimeter Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: Source Catalog and Multiplicity”, by J. Hodge et al., to appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

The companion paper, “An ALMA survey of submillimetre galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: High resolution 870 μm source counts”, on the multiplicity of the sources by A. Karim et al., will appear in the Oxford University Press journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. After the embargo expires a copy of the paper will be available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stt196. A preprint of the paper is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.0249

Notes for editors

The observations were made in a region of the sky in the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace) called the Chandra Deep Field South. It has been extensively studied already by many telescopes both on the ground and in space. The new observations from ALMA extend the deep and high resolution observations of this region into the millimetre/submillimetre part of the spectrum and complement the earlier observations.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) is a collaboration between Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) at 50%, Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) at 23% and the European Southern Observatory at 27%.

The team is composed of J. A. Hodge (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie Heidelberg, Germany [MPIA]), A. Karim (Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, United Kingdom), I. Smail (Durham), A. M. Swinbank (Durham), F. Walter (MPIA), A. D. Biggs (ESO), R. J. Ivison (UKATC and Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom), A. Weiss (Max–Planck Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany), D. M. Alexander (Durham), F. Bertoldi (Argelander–Institute of Astronomy, Bonn University, Germany), W. N. Brandt (Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos & Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA), S. C. Chapman (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, United Kingdom), K. E. K. Coppin (McGill University, Montreal, Canada), P. Cox (IRAM, Saint–Martin d’Héres, France), A. L. R. Danielson (Durham), H. Dannerbauer (University of Vienna, Austria), C. De Breuck (ESO), R. Decarli (MPIA), A. C. Edge (Durham), T. R. Greve (University College London, United Kingdom), K. K. Knudsen (Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden), K. M. Menten (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany), H.–W. Rix (MPIA), E. Schinnerer (MPIA), J. M. Simpson (Durham), J. L. Wardlow (Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, USA) and P. van der Werf (Leiden Observatory, Netherlands).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

ESA’s Herschel space observatory has provided the first images of a dust belt – produced by colliding comets or asteroids – orbiting a subgiant star known to host a planetary system. The team of scientists who made the discovery publishes their results in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

An image of the star Kappa Coronae Borealis, based on observations with the PACS instrument on the Herschel Space Observatory. North is up and east is left. The star is in the centre of the frame (not visible in this graphic) with an excess of infrared emission detected around it, interpreted as a dusty debris disc containing asteroids and/or comets. The inclination of the planetary system is constrained at an angle of 60º from face-on. Credit: ESA/Bonsor et al (2013). Click for a larger imageAfter billions of years steadily burning hydrogen in their cores, stars like our Sun exhaust this central fuel reserve and start burning it in shells around the core. They swell to become subgiant stars, before later becoming red giants.

At least during the subgiant phase, planets, asteroids and comet belts around these ‘retired’ stars are expected to survive, but observations are needed to measure their properties. One approach is to search for discs of dust around the stars, generated by collisions between populations of asteroids or comets.

Thanks to the sensitive far-infrared detection capabilities of the Herschel space observatory, astronomers have been able to resolve bright emission around the star Kappa Coronae Borealis (κ CrB, or Kappa Cor Bor), indicating the presence of a dusty debris disc. This star is a little heavier than our own Sun at 1.5 solar masses, is around 2.5 billion years old and lies at a distance of roughly 100 light years.

From ground-based observations, it is known to host one giant planet roughly twice the mass of Jupiter orbiting at a distance equivalent to the Asteroid Belt in our own Solar System. A second planet is suspected, but its mass is not well constrained.

Herschel’s detection provides rare insight into the life of planetary systems orbiting subgiant stars, and enables a detailed study of the architecture of its planet and disc system.

“This is the first ‘retired’ star that we have found with a debris disc and one or more planets,” says Amy Bonsor of the Institute de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, and lead author of the study.

‘The disc has survived the star’s entire lifetime without being destroyed. That’s very different to our own Solar System, where most of the debris was cleared away in a phase called the Late Heavy Bombardment era, around 600 million years after the Sun formed.”

Dr Bonsor’s team used models to propose three possible configurations for the disc and planets that fit Herschel’s observations of Kappa Cor Bor.

The first model has just one continuous dust belt extending from 20 AU to 220 AU (where 1 AU, or Astronomical Unit, is the distance between Earth and Sun). By comparison, the icy debris disc in our Solar System – known as the Kuiper Belt – spans a narrower range of distances, 30–50 AU from the Sun. In this model, one of the planets orbits at a distance of greater than 7 AU from the star, and its gravitational influence may sculpt the inner edge of the disc.

A variation on this model has the disc being stirred by the gravitational influence of both companions, mixing it up such that the rate of dust production in the disc peaks at around 70–80 AU from the star.

In another interesting scenario, the dust disc is divided into two narrow belts, centred on 40 AU and 165 AU, respectively. Here, the outermost companion may orbit between the two belts between a distance of about 7 AU and 70 AU, opening the possibility of it being rather more massive than a planet, possibly a substellar brown dwarf.
“It is a mysterious and intriguing system: is there a planet or even two planets sculpting one wide disc, or does the star have a brown dwarf companion that has split the disc in two?” says Dr Bonsor.

As this is the first known example of a subgiant star with planets and a debris disc orbiting it, more examples are needed to determine whether Kappa Cor Bor is unusual or not.

“Thanks to Herschel’s sensitive far-infrared capabilities and its rich dataset, we already have hints of other subgiant stars that may also have dusty discs. More work will be needed to see if they also have planets,” says Göran Pilbratt, ESA’s Herschel project scientist.

Markus Bauer
ESA Science and Robotic Exploration Communication Officer
Tel: +31 71 565 6799
Mob: +31 61 594 3 954
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Amy Bonsor
Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, France
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Göran Pilbratt



ESA Herschel Project Scientist
Tel: +31 71 565 3621
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An image can be downloaded from

https://www.ras.org.uk/images/stories/press/esa_subgiant_img_d_5.jpg

Caption: The star Kappa Coronae Borealis, based on observations with the PACS instrument on the Herschel Space Observatory. North is up and east is left. The star is in the centre of the frame (not visible in this graphic) with an excess of infrared emission detected around it, interpreted as a dusty debris disc containing asteroids and/or comets. The inclination of the planetary system is constrained at an angle of 60º from face-on. Credit: ESA/Bonsor et al (2013)

Further information

The new work appears in “Spatially Resolved Images of Dust Belt(s) Around the Planet-hosting Subgiant κ CrB”, by A. Bonsor et al. is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, April 2013. A copy of the paper is available at http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/03/29/mnras.stt367.full

Observations were performed using the Herschel Photodetector Array Camera & Spectrometer (PACS) at 100 μm and 160 μm.

Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA.

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

Follow the RAS on Twitter via @royalastrosoc

Applications are invited for undergraduate internships in meteoritics, to be held during summer 2013. The internships will be funded by the F.A. Paneth Meteorite Trust, which was set up ‘to encourage and further research concerned with meteorites’.Prof. Friedrich Adolf Paneth (copyright University of Durham)

Applications should be submitted by researchers who wish to supervise an undergraduate intern. Full details of the scheme and how to apply are available.

Applications must be received by 30 April 2013.