The super telescope ALMA located a giant star embryo

The telescope Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array (ALMA), located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, has got the best view so far achieved a huge star in the Milky Way, which has 500 times the mass of the Sun in the formation process within a dark cloud.

The embryonic star inside the cloud hungrily devours the material falling inward. It is believed that the cloud will give birth to a very bright star over 100 times the mass of the Sun, according to reports Dicyt .

The most massive and brightest stars in the galaxy are formed in cold, dark clouds, but the process is not only involved in star dust, but also a mystery. An international team astronomers has used ALMA for a 'prenatal ultrasound' in the microwave range in order to get a clearer picture of the formation of such giant star located about 11,000 light-years away in a Spitzer cloud known as Dark Cloud (SDC) 335579-0292.

Theories of massive star formation

There are two theories on the formation of massive stars. One dark cloud suggests that parental fragments, creating several small nuclei themselves collapse and eventually form stars.

The other theory argues that all the cloud begins to collapse inward, with material that is rushing towards the center of the cloud forming one or more massive stellar beasts. A team led by Nicolas Peretto, CEA / AIM Paris-Saclay (France) and the University of Cardiff (United Kingdom), concluded that ALMA was the right tool to help them discover what was happening in reality.

Thanks to observations made ​​with the Spitzer Space Telescope and NASA's Herschel Space Telescope ESA SDC335.579-0292 revealed a stunning setting with dense dark filaments of gas and dust. Now the team is using the unique sensitivity of ALMA to see in detail both the amount of dust and gas movement moving into the dark cloud, and found a true giant.

"The extraordinary ALMA observations allowed us to obtain the first really deep view of what was happening inside the cloud," said Peretto. "One of the sources we have found is immense, it is the largest protostellar core all has been located so far in the Milky Way.

It will create a star of more than 100 times the mass of the Sun

ALMA observations show that there is much more material flowing inwards still further and increasing mass (now 500 times larger than the Sun). Finally, this material will collapse, forming a young star more than 100 times the mass of the star in the solar system. As he told Peretto just one of 10,000 stars in the Milky Way mass reach such amount.

"These stars are not only rare, but its birth is extremely fast and very young children, which find an object so massive at such an early stage of its evolution is a spectacular result," says a team member, Gary Fuller, University of Manchester (United Kingdom).

Another team member, Ana Duarte Cabral, insists that "ALMA observations reveal details of the movements spectacular network of filaments of dust and gas, and show that a huge amount gas is flowing to a central compact "and therefore supports the theory that the overall collapse for massive star formation, rather than fragmentation.

These observations were part of the stage of ALMA Early Science, and have used only a quarter of the total set of antennas. "We got these as full observations using only part of the full potential of ALMA" concludes Peretto. "ALMA will revolutionize our appreciative of star formation, solving current problems, and no doubt giving rise to new ones."