Tag Archive for 'Binary star'

This artist’s concept illustrates how KSw 71 compares with the Sun. Both stars are shown to scale. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Francis Reddy.

Astronomers Find Group of Fast-Spinning, X-ray Active Stars

Oct 29, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using observations from NASA’s Kepler and Swift space observatories have spotted 18 fast-spinning stars that produce X-rays at more than...

Artist’s conception of a binary system with a brown dwarf and a giant planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

HD 87646: Astronomers Discover Bizarre ‘Binary-Binary’ System

Oct 24, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of scientists led by University of Florida astronomer Dr. Bo Ma has discovered the first ‘binary-binary’ system — two massive companions...

This mosaic shows the Carina Nebula (left part of the image), home of the Eta Carinae stellar system. This part was observed with the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The middle part shows the direct surrounding of the star system: the Homunculus Nebula, created by the ejected material from the Eta Carinae system. This image was taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The right image shows the innermost part of the system as seen with ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer/ It is the highest resolution image of Eta Carinae ever. Image credit: Gerd Weigelt / ESO.

Eta Carinae Imaged in Sharpest Detail Ever

Oct 19, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in Chile have snapped the most detailed image ever of the Eta Carinae stellar system. This...

V Hydrae. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Field, STScI.

Astronomers Detect Giant Balls of Plasma Shooting from Binary Star System

Oct 7, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have detected blobs of plasma being ejected near a dying red giant star called V Hydrae. This image...

LMC P3 (circled) is located in the supernova remnant DEM L241 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Record-Breaking Gamma-Ray Binary Spotted in Large Magellanic Cloud

Sep 30, 2016 by News Staff

A gamma-ray binary discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy approximately 163,000 light-years away, is the first object of its kind ever...

Astronomers Confirm Existence of Giant Circumbinary Exoplanet 8,000 Light-Years Away

Sep 22, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the existence of a Saturn-mass exoplanet in the binary system OGLE-2007-BLG-349L,...

Artist’s concept of giant planets orbiting in double-star system. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / T. Pyle.

Astronomers Discover Three Giant Exoplanets in ‘Twin’ Binary System

Sep 2, 2016 by Sergio Prostak

An international team of astronomers from the United States and Chile has detected three giant planets in the HD 133131 system, a pair of stellar ‘twins’...

This artist’s impression shows AR Scorpii. In this unique double star a rapidly spinning white dwarf star (right) powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star (left) and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio. Image credit: M. Garlick / University of Warwick / ESO.

Astronomers Find New Type of Binary Star

Jul 27, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a new type of binary star, in which a rapidly-spinning white dwarf star sweeps powerful beams of...

HD 20782b. Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

HD 20782b: Astronomers Discover Exoplanet with Highly Eccentric Orbit

Mar 21, 2016 by News Staff

HD 20782b’s orbit closely resembles that of a comet, making it the most eccentric planet ever known. This artist’s rendering shows HD 20782b, the most...

VLTI Captures Best-Ever View of Old Star’s Dusty Disc

Mar 9, 2016 by News Staff

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at Paranal Observatory, Chile, has taken the sharpest image ever seen of the disc of gas and dust around...

An artist impression of HD 142527 based on ALMA data. According to astronomers, HD 142527 consists of a main star a little more than twice the mass of our Sun and a smaller companion star only about a third the mass of our Sun; they are separated by approximately one billion miles. The rendition shows a distinctive arc of dust (red) embedded in the protoplanetary disk. The red arc is free of gas, suggesting the carbon monoxide has frozen out, forming a layer of frost on the dust grains in that region. Astronomers speculate this frost provides a boost to planet formation. The two dots in the center represent the two stars in the system. Image credit: B. Saxton / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

ALMA Images Shed More Light on Planet Formation around Binary Stars

Feb 17, 2016 by Natali Anderson

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile, an astronomer from the United States has taken a detailed look...

The binary star system HR 5171 is the bright object just below the center of this wide-field image. Image credit: Digitized Sky Survey 2 / ESO.

European Astronomers Solve Mystery of Hypergiant Star HR 5171A

Jan 12, 2016 by Sergio Prostak

Astronomers from Belgium and the Netherlands believe they have discovered the origin of mysterious blue light coming from the hypergiant star HR 5171A. The...

Text of Cairo Calendar page rto VIII; inside the superimposed rectangle is the hieratic writing for the word Horus. A passage in this document dates it to the reign of Ramses II in the Nineteenth Dynasty. Image credit: Jetsu L. / Porceddu S., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144140.s001.

3,200-Year-Old Papyrus Contains Astrophysical Information about Variable Star Algol

Dec 23, 2015 by Sergio Prostak

Ancient Egyptians wrote Calendars of Lucky and Unlucky Days that assigned astronomically influenced prognoses for each day of the year. The best preserved...

This artist’s impression shows VFTS 352 - the hottest and most massive double star system to date where the two components are in contact and sharing material. Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada.

VFTS 352: Astronomers Spot Hottest, Most Massive Overcontact Binary

Oct 21, 2015 by News Staff

New observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope have revealed that a binary star system called VFTS 352 is among the most extreme and strangest yet...

This image shows Epsilon Lupi (center). Image credit: Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD.

Mysterious Magnetic Field Detected in Binary Star System Epsilon Lupi

Sep 10, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers has detected a so-called ‘fossil’ magnetic field in both components of an early-type binary star system called Epsilon...

These Hubble images show elliptical galaxies with dark, wispy dust lanes, the signature of a recent galaxy merger. The dust is the only relic of a smaller galaxy that was consumed by the larger elliptical galaxy. The X in the images marks the location of supernova explosions that are associated with the galaxies. Each supernova may have been gravitationally kicked out of its host galaxy by a pair of central supermassive black holes. When two galaxies merge, so do their supermassive black holes. Prof Foley suggests the supernovae were stars that were once part of double-star systems. These systems wandered too close to the binary black holes, which ejected them from their galaxies. Eventually, the stars in each system moved close enough together to trigger a supernova blast. These outcast supernovae are located at various distances from their home galaxies. SN 2000ds (left) is at least 12,000 light-years from its galaxy, NGC 2768; SN 2005cz (right) is at least 7,000 light-years from its galaxy, NGC 4589. NGC 2768 resides 75 million light-years from Earth, and NGC 4589 is 108 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / R. Foley, University of Illinois.

Astronomer Throws Light on Origins of Outcast Supernovae

Aug 16, 2015 by News Staff

Outcast supernovae that explode all alone in space present a scientific mystery. Prof Ryan Foley from the University of Illinois has developed a theory...

$An artist’s impression of the binary system PSR J1023+0038: the extremely dense, rapidly-spinning neutron star, just 10-15 km in size, is in a close orbit with a more normal companion star. The strong gravity of the neutron star pulls gas from its companion, which spirals in towards the neutron star, forming a disk. Some fraction of that gas gets accelerated outwards in energetic, oppositely-directed jets, which give off the radio waves that can be seen by Earth’s radio telescopes. Image credit: ICRAR.$