Planets form and obtain their compositions in disks around young stars, and the outcome of this process is intimately linked to the disk chemistry and structure.
'Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales' (MAPS) is an ALMA Large Program (2018.1.01055.L) designed to expand our understanding of the chemistry of planet formation by exploring protoplanetary disk chemical structures down to 10 au scales.
Together these observations provide constraints on a range of disk properties related to planet formation. In particular, MAPS was designed to answer the following key questions...
A schematic representation of the interlinked physical and chemical processes that occur in protoplanetary disks, and the open questions that MAPS has been designed to answer (adapted from Öberg & Bergin 2021).
The MAPS program focuses on five disks — around IM Lup, GM Aur, AS 209, HD 163296, and MWC 480 — in which dust substructures are detected and planet formation appears to be ongoing. We observed these disks in 4 spectral setups in ALMA Band 3 and Band 6, which together cover approximately 50 molecular lines from 20 different chemical species.
The 20 molecular faces of the HD 163296 disk. These comprise a representative, but non-exhaustive, set of zeroth moment maps towards HD 163296 (from MAPS I, Öberg et al. 2021).
The program overview and data calibration is presented in MAPS I, and the imaging strategy in MAPS II. Some key science results are:
Together, our results demonstrate the utility of deep, high-resolution ALMA observations of molecular lines to explore the chemistry that affects and probes planet formation in disks.
In addition to the MAPS publications, all data products and analysis scripts are publicly available from our dedicated download page.