Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; D. Berry

For decades, scientists thought that the magnetic field lines coursing around newly forming stars were both powerful and unyielding, working like jail bars to corral star-forming material. More recently, astronomers have found tantalizing evidence that large-scale turbulence far from a nascent star can drag magnetic fields around at will. Now, a team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has discovered a surprisingly weak and wildly disorganized magnetic field very near a newly emerging protostar, shown here in an artist's impression. These observations suggest that the impact of magnetic fields on star formation is more complex than previously thought.

Provider: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Image Source: https://public.nrao.edu/news/2017-alma-serp/

Curator: NRAO/AUI/NSF, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)