binary stars. tagged posts

This artist’s concept depicts “heartbeat stars,” which have been detected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and others. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Discovered in large numbers by NASA’s Kepler, heartbeat stars are binary stars that got their name because if you were to map out their brightness over time, the result would look like an electrocardiogram. Scientists are interested in them because they are binary systems in elongated elliptical orbits. This makes them natural laboratories for studying the gravitational effects of stars on each other. In a heartbeat star system, the distance between the two stars varies drastically as they orbit each other. Heartbeat stars can get as close as a few stellar radii to each other, and as far as 10 times that distance during one orbit.

At the point of ...

Slice through the three-dimensional simulation volume after 105 days in the common envelope. In the orbital plane, the companion star and the red giant core are circling around each other. Credit: Ohlmann /HITS

HITS astrophysicists use new methods to simulate the common-envelope phase of binary stars, discovering dynamic irregularities that may help to explain how supernovae evolve. More than half the stars have a companion that can have a major impact on their primary companions. The interplay within these so-called binary star systems is particularly intensive when the 2 stars involved are going through a phase in which they are surrounded by a common envelope...

DI Cha star system. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt Text credit: European Space Agency

Star system is DI Cha, and while only 2 stars are apparent, it is actually a quadruple system containing 2 sets of binary stars. As this is a relatively young star system it is surrounded by dust. The young stars are molding the dust into a wispy wrap. The host of this alluring interaction between dust and star is the Chamaeleon I dark cloud — 1 of 3 such clouds that comprise a large star-forming region known as the Chamaeleon Complex. DI Cha’s juvenility is not remarkable within this region...