M4 tagged posts

Listening to the Relics of the Milky Way: Sounds from Oldest stars in our Milky Way

Artist's concept of the Milky Way. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Artist’s concept of the Milky Way. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

University of Birmingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy team has reported the detection of resonant acoustic oscillations of stars in ‘M4’, one of the oldest known clusters of stars in the Galaxy, some 13 billion years old. Using data from the NASA Kepler/K2 mission, they studied resonant oscillations asteroseismology. These oscillations lead to miniscule changes or pulses in brightness, and are caused by sound trapped inside the stars. By measuring the tones in this ‘stellar music’, it is possible to determine the mass and age of individual stars. Thus asteroseismology can be used to study early history of our Galaxy.

The M4 cluster (top) with sections showing white dwarf stars shown in the bottom left and right. The blue circles indicate the dwarfs

The M4 cluster (top) with sections showing white dwarf stars shown in the bottom left and right...

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