High angular resolution images of CW Leo spanning more than eight years. Credit: Paul Stewart and Peter Tuthill, University of Sydney.
It is the brightest infrared star in the Northern sky, but a student has found that astronomers have been mistakenly interpreting the dust in the environment of a famous star that lies 450 light years from Earth. The star CW Leo aka IRC+10216, would be the second brightest star in the sky if our eyes could see infrared light. Images of its circumstellar environment released today reveal substantial evolution occurring over a span of more than 8 years, with none of the previously identified bright spots in fact containing the star, which is now believed to be buried in its own dust.
Graduate student Paul Stewart has reconstructed images from 2000 to 2008 – w...
Read More
Recent Comments