The Snowline of a Star: Where Water Turns to Ice

13 February, 2017 / Read time: 1 minute

In this video, National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) astronomer Al Wootten explains how snow lines form in the protoplanetary disks of young stars and how we can study their structure with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations.

An example of this is what was observed in the protoplanetary disk of the protostar V883 Orionis, in the constellation of Orion about 1305 light-years away, which shows an eruption of the star that displaced the snow line in its disk.

Credits: Alexandra Angelich, Bill Saxton, and Jeff Hellerman NRAO/AUI/NSF; M. Kornmesser, L. Cieza et al., ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
Music: Geodesium.