.

Recent Comments

    binary stars. tagged posts

    Research team makes Significant Strides in Explaining the Stellar Evolution of Massive Binary Stars

    July 14, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Stellar Evolution of Massive Binary Stars
    The artist’s illustration of  an interacting binary star. When massive binary stars begin to interact, the more massive star transfers a portion of its mass to the less massive companion star. This mass transfer process takes approximately tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, which is relatively short compared to the lifespan of stars. Afterward, significant changes in the evolution of both stars start to occur. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/S.E. de Mink

    Massive stars refer to stars that are more than ten times the mass of the sun. They can release powerful ultraviolet radiation, ionize the gas in the interstellar medium, and eventually produce the elements necessary for the birth of life through spectacular supernova explosions...

    Read More

    Astronomers discover class of Strange Objects near our Galaxy’s Enormous Black Hole

    January 17, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Image shows orbits of the G objects at the center of our galaxy, with the supermassive black hole indicated with a white cross. Stars, gas and dust are in the background.

    Astronomers from UCLA’s Galactic Center Orbits Initiative have discovered a new class of bizarre objects at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. They published their research today in the journal Nature.

    “These objects look like gas and behave like stars,” said co-author Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group.

    The new objects look compact most of the time and stretch out when their orbits bring them closest to the black hole...

    Read More

    Astronomers uncover Largest known Population of Brown Dwarfs sprinkled among Newborn stars in the Orion Nebula

    January 13, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This image is part of a Hubble Space Telescope survey for low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and planets in the Orion Nebula. Each symbol identifies a pair of objects, which can be seen in the symbol's center as a single dot of light. Special image processing techniques were used to separate the starlight into a pair of objects. The thicker inner circle represents the primary body, and the thinner outer circle indicates the companion. The circles are color-coded: red for a planet; orange for a brown dwarf; and yellow for a star. Located in the upper left corner is a planet-planet pair in the absence of a parent star. In the middle of the right side is a pair of brown dwarfs. The portion of the Orion Nebula measures roughly four by three light-years. Credit: NASA , ESA, and G. Strampelli (STScI)

    This image is part of a Hubble Space Telescope survey for low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and planets in the Orion Nebula. Each symbol identifies a pair of objects, which can be seen in the symbol’s center as a single dot of light. Special image processing techniques were used to separate the starlight into a pair of objects. The thicker inner circle represents the primary body, and the thinner outer circle indicates the companion. The circles are color-coded: red for a planet; orange for a brown dwarf; and yellow for a star. Located in the upper left corner is a planet-planet pair in the absence of a parent star. In the middle of the right side is a pair of brown dwarfs. The portion of the Orion Nebula measures roughly four by three light-years. Credit: NASA , ESA, and G. Strampelli (STScI)

    Read More

    Low-mass Stars always Born with a Sibling: Many, like our sun, split up

    June 15, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    1. A radio image of a triple star system forming within a dusty disk in the Perseus molecular cloud obtained by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. Credit: Bill Saxton, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF 2. Radio image of a very young binary star system, less than about 1 million years old, that formed within a dense core (oval outline) in the Perseus molecular cloud. All stars likely form as binaries within dense cores. Credit: SCUBA-2 survey image by Sarah Sadavoy, CfA

    Did our sun have a twin when it was born 4.5 billion years ago? Almost certainly yes – though not an identical twin...

    Read More