The most meticulous view of “star formation” in huge distant galaxy observed by ALMA

ALMA’s Long Baseline Campaign has produced a stunningly detailed image of a huge distant galaxy with the assistance of a “natural telescope” known as a gravitational lens.

Star-forming regions as such have never been observed this meticulously before in a galaxy so distant. The foreground lensing galaxy can be seen in the left panel and the gravitationally lensed galaxy called the SDP.81 that forms a nearly perfect Einstein ring is barely observable.

The sharp ALMA image of the Einstein ring can be observed in the image with the center lensing galaxy being imperceptible to ALMA.

The Long Baseline Campaign of Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array has generated some astonishing observations and had been very successful in drawing together detailed information about the inhabitants of the near and distant universe that has never been done before.

The observation that has been made last year has been a part of the campaign and it aimed at a distant galaxy called the HATLAS J090311.6+003906, also known as SDP.81. Astronomers believe that the light emitting from this galaxy is due to a cosmic effect known as gravitational lensing. The large galaxy sitting that exists between SDP.81 and ALMA operates as a lens as it distorts the light of further distant galaxy for creating a near-perfect example of a phenomenon acknowledged as an Einstein Ring.

Co-author of two of the papers and Director for Science for ESO, Rob Ivison said, “The reconstructed ALMA image of the galaxy is spectacular. ALMA’s huge collecting area, the large separation of its antennas, and the stable atmosphere above the Atacama Desert all lead to exquisite detail in both images and spectra. That means that we get very sensitive observations, as well as information about how the different parts of the galaxy are moving. We can study galaxies at the other end of the universe as they merge and create huge numbers of stars. This is the kind of stuff that gets me up in the morning!”