Stellar twins tagged posts

Researchers have uncovered evidence for our sun joining a mass migration of similar “twins” leaving the core regions of our galaxy, 4 to 6 billion years ago. The team created and studied an unprecedentedly accurate catalog of stars and their properties using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. Their discovery sheds light on the evolution of our galaxy, particularly the development of the rotating bar-like structure at its center.

While archaeology on Earth studies the human past, galactic archaeology traces the vast journey of stars and galaxies...

Two ‘twin’ stars with identical spectra observed by the La Silla Telescope. Since it is known that one star is 40 parsecs away, the difference in their apparent brightnesses allows calculation of the second star’s distance. Credit: Carolina Jofre

A new, highly accurate method of measuring distances between stars, could be used to measure the size of the galaxy, enabling greater understanding of how it evolved. Using a technique which searches out stellar ‘twins’, they have been able to measure distances between stars with far greater precision than is possible using typical model-dependent methods. It will complement to Gaia satellite, which is creating a 3D map of the sky over 5 yrs, and could aid in the understanding of fundamental astrophysical processes at work far away.

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