NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Grief
Take a moment out of this hellish year and imagine a small star orbiting our sun. After the era, this Two stars colliding. Breaking the chaos and leaving behind a star and a cloud of dust and gas, A nebula, Spread throughout the universe. The cloud extends to a distance of about 13 light-years, enough to finish 10 solar systems to the end.
While such a fate does not await our Sun (although it is 2020, so …), that exact scenario would have happened a few thousand years ago on TYC 2597-735-1, a star that is more than 6,000 light-years from Earth. Away. Since the discovery of the star and its fascinating blue ring by NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer Space Telescope in 2004, astronomers have been amazed at how it came to be.
“Whenever we think we’ve found this thing, it’ll say, ‘No, that’s not right,'” said Mark Seibert, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and co-author of the new study, published in the journal Nature. Wednesday.
Using data from the telescope, also known as the Galex, and other ground- and space-based telescopes to study the so-called Blue Ring Nebula in more detail, a team of astronomers believe that the collision of stars has created a global eccentricity. .
The Galaxy was launched in 2003 and studied the universe in ultraviolet light, 10 years later, before giving up. He saw an ultraviolet ring around TYC 2597-735-1 in 2004. To help visualize the cloud, researchers can color it. The image below rounds out the UV light and debris displayed in blue, indicating visible light. The bright yellow ball in the center is TYC 2597-735-1.
Our view of the Earth’s blue ring nebula produces this stunning image, with UV light artificially blue and visible light pink. Astronomers believe they have worked out its fantastic 3D geometry.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / NASA / JPL-Caltech / M. Seibert (Carnegie Institution for Science) / K. Hodley (Caltech) / Galaxy Team
With the help of space-based telescopes such as Hawaii’s WM Cake Observatory, Palomar Observatory near San Diego and NASA’s retired Spicer, researchers began to establish some facts about the cloud. Observations of light and computer modeling in different wavelengths helped to tell the whole story and explain the origins of the Blue Ring.
It contains a star that goblins our Sun’s smallest star in a star merger. A sun-like star launched a balloon, pulling a large rising small star into its gravity. The two danced, bound by gravity, for many years and as the little star leaned closer, he began to control the parts of his larger dancing partner, making a gas disc and wrapping the pair. When the small star was finally used up, a ton of energy was cut off from the gaseous disk and pushed out into two cone-shaped clouds.
Because the blue ring nebula faces the Earth directly, we see conical clouds in the sky as a magnificent ring. It’s like a kind of ice cream cone. If you hold the cone horizontally (bad idea), you can see there is a ring of ice cream on top (before it slips to the ground.) Ultraviolet light is given due to the heating of the hydrogen atom. In the cone
The animation at the top of the article highlights the 3D formation of the nebula in impressive detail by rotating around the cloud and giving us a better angle. (You may also see an optical illusion where it appears that the two cones are moving towards each other instead of revolving around the central star.)
Astronomers are also excited because they have caught the merger process at the very right time. Don Neil, a Celtic research scientist and co-author of the paper, compares it to catching a child’s first step in Celtic’s publication. “If you blink, you can miss it,” he said. This is the first time researchers have been able to see a merger system that is not Vibrated with a very large amount of dust, obscuring the star in its center.
In a few thousand years, the blue ring nebula will fade, as it never did. Maybe we can say the same about 2020 in a few months.
