ALMA Captures Spiral-Formed Fuel Streamer Guided by Magnetic Fields in Star-Forming Area

This streamer of gasoline is channeling matter from the encompassing cloud of a star-forming area in Perseus immediately onto a new child binary star system referred to as SVS 13A.

An artist’s impression of the SVS 13A system. Image credit score: NSF / AUI / NSF’s NRAO / P.Vosteen.

Stars are born from clouds of gasoline and mud, however latest observations present star delivery is much extra dynamic than beforehand thought.

The new knowledge from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured each the mud and molecules swirling across the SVS 13A system, revealing that magnetic fields don’t simply thread by these stellar nurseries — they actively steer the move of fabric, offering a most well-liked route for gasoline to journey onto the disk the place new stars and planets type.

“Imagine a garden hose, but instead of water it’s smoothly delivering star-building material through a winding path carved by invisible forces,” mentioned Dr. Paulo Cortes, an astronomer at NSF’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Joint ALMA Observatory.

“That’s the picture emerging from the ALMA observations: a channel of gas, dubbed a sub-Alfvénic streamer, regulated by spiral magnetic field lines.”

“These new data give us a new window into star formation.”

“This streamer shows how magnetic fields can regulate star formation by shaping the infall of material, like a dedicated highway for the cars to move along.”

The ALMA pictures and knowledge reveal two spiral arms of mud encircling the celebrities, with a streamer of gasoline that carefully follows the identical path.

This exceptional alignment suggests gasoline within the streamer strikes slowly in comparison with what was beforehand believed, supporting the thought of a magnetized channel relatively than a turbulently collapsing cloud.

The proven fact that such a streamer exists and connects the cloud to the disk — feeding materials in a managed approach — signifies that gravity and magnetism each play essential roles in constructing stars and shaping the planets which will ultimately type round them.

This pioneering end result marks the primary time astronomers have immediately mapped each the streamer and its guided magnetic discipline in a single remark.

“The sub-Alfvénic streamer suggests a new role for the magnetic field when gravity dominates, where it acts as a ‘guide’ facilitating the infalling of material from the envelope onto the disk,” the astronomers mentioned.

The findings seem this week within the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

_____

P.C. Cortés et al. 2025. First Results from ALPPS: A Sub-Alfvénic Streamer in SVS 13A. ApJL 992, L31; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ae0c04