New observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter array (ALMA) have given astronomers the best view yet of a monster star in the process of forming within a dark cloud. A stellar womb with over 500 times the mass of the Sun has been found — the largest ever seen in the Milky Way — and it is still growing. The embryonic star within the cloud is hungrily feeding on material that is racing inwards. The cloud is expected to give birth to a very brilliant star with up to 100 times the mass of the Sun.

The most massive and brightest stars in the galaxy form within cool and dark clouds but the process remains not just shrouded in dust, but also in mystery [1]. An international team of astronomers has now used ALMA to perform a microwave prenatal scan to get a clearer look at the formation of one such monster star that is located around 11 000 light-years away, in a cloud known as the Spitzer Dark Cloud (SDC) 335.579-0.292.

There are two theories on the formation of the most massive stars. One suggests that the parental dark cloud fragments, creating several small cores that collapse on their own and eventually form stars. The other is more dramatic: the entire cloud begins to collapse inwards, with material racing towards the cloud’s centre to form one or more massive behemoths there. A team led by Nicolas Peretto of CEA/AIM Paris-Saclay, France, and Cardiff University, UK, realised that ALMA was the perfect tool to help find out what was really happening.

SDC335.579-0.292 was first revealed as a dramatic environment of dark, dense filaments of gas and dust through observations with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory. Now the team has used the unique sensitivity of ALMA to look in detail at both the amount of dust and the motion of the gas moving around within the dark cloud — and they have found a true monster.

“The remarkable observations from ALMA allowed us to get the first really in-depth look at what was going on within this cloud,” says Peretto. “We wanted to see how monster stars form and grow, and we certainly achieved our aim! One of the sources we have found is an absolute giant — the largest protostellar core ever spotted in the Milky Way."

This core — the womb of the embryonic star — has over 500 times the mass of our Sun swirling around within it [2]. And the ALMA observations show that much more material is still flowing inwards and increasing the mass still further. This material will eventually collapse to form a young star up to 100 times as massive as our home star — a very rare beast.

“Even though we already believed that the region was a good candidate for being a massive star-forming cloud, we were not expecting to find such a massive embryonic star at its centre,” says Peretto. “This object is expected to form a star that is up to 100 times more massive than the Sun. Only about one in ten thousand of all the stars in the Milky Way reach that kind of mass!”

"Not only are these stars rare, but their birth is extremely rapid and their childhood is short, so finding such a massive object so early in its evolution is a spectacular result," adds team member Gary Fuller from the University of Manchester, UK.

Another team member, Ana Duarte Cabral from the Laboratoire d‘Astrophysique de Bordeaux, France, emphasises that "the ALMA observations reveal the spectacular details of the motions of the filamentary network of dust and gas, and show that a huge amount of gas is flowing into a central compact region". This strongly supports the theory of global collapse for the formation of massive stars, rather than fragmentation.

 These observations formed part of the Early Science phase of ALMA, and have made use of just a quarter of the full array of antennas. “We managed to get these very detailed observations using only a fraction of ALMA’s ultimate potential,” concludes Peretto. “ALMA will definitely revolutionise our knowledge of star formation, solving some current problems, and certainly raising new ones.”

Notes

[1] Astronomers use the expression “massive stars” to mean those with roughly ten or more times the mass of the Sun. It refers to the star’s mass, not its size.

[2] This star formation region is forming many stars. The 500 solar mass core is the most massive of several.

More information

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.

This research was presented in a paper entitled “Global collapse of molecular clouds as a formation mechanism for the most massive stars”, to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The team is composed of N. Peretto (CEA/AIM Paris Saclay, France; University of Cardiff, UK), G. A. Fuller (University of Manchester, UK; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and UK ALMA Regional Centre Node), A. Duarte-Cabral (LAB, OASU, Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, France), A. Avison (University of Manchester, UK; UK ALMA Regional Centre node), P. Hennebelle (CEA/AIM Paris Saclay, France), J. E. Pineda (University of Manchester, UK; UK ALMA Regional Centre node; ESO, Garching, Germany), Ph. André (CEA/AIM Paris Saclay, France), S. Bontemps (LAB, OASU, Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, France), F. Motte (CEA/AIM Paris Saclay, France), N. Schneider (LAB, OASU, Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, France) and S. Molinari (INAF, Rome, Italy).

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”.

Links

Research paper

Photos of the ALMA array

Contacts

Nicolas Peretto

School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University

Cardiff, UK

Tel: +44 29 208 75314

Email: Nicolas.Peretto@astro.cf.ac.uk

Gary Fuller

Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester

Manchester, UK

Tel: +44 161 306 3653

Email: G.Fuller@manchester.ac.uk

Ana Duarte-Cabral

Laboratoire d‘Astrophysique de Bordeaux

Bordeaux, France

Email: Ana.Cabral@obs.u-bordeaux1.fr

Richard Hook

ESO, Public Information Officer

Garching bei München, Germany

Tel: +49 89 3200 6655

Cell: +49 151 1537 3591

Email: rhook@eso.org