Space and astronomy news
There are some astronomical images that capture rapturous beauty, with their brilliant colors and interplay of shadow and light. A beautiful image can be enough to stir the soul, but in astronomy they often also have a story to tell. An example of this can be seen in a recent image released by NSF’s NOIRLab.
Continue reading “There's So Much Going on in This Star-Forming Nebula”
370 light years away from us, a solar system is making baby planets. The star at the center of it all is young, only about 6 million years old. And its babies are two enormous planets, likely both gas giants, nursing on gaseous matter from the star’s circumsolar disk.
Continue reading “Astronomers See Adorable Baby Planets Forming Around a Young Star”
Watch out! Carbon monoxide gas is likely fleeing the disk of a young star like our Sun, producing an unusual signature in infrared. This could be the first time winds have been confirmed in association with a T Tauri star, or something else might be going on.
Because the observed signature of the star (called AS 205 N) didn’t meet what models of similar stars predicted, astronomers say it’s possible it’s not winds after all, but a companion tugging away at the gas.
“The material in the disk of a T Tauri star usually, but not always, emits infrared radiation with a predictable energy distribution,” stated Colette Salyk, an astronomer with the National Optical Astronomical Observatory who led the research. “Some T Tauri stars, however, like to act up by emitting infrared radiation in unexpected ways.”
T Tauri stars are still young enough to be surrounded by dust and gas that could eventually form planets. Winds in the vicinity, however, could make it difficult for enough gas to stick around to form Jupiter-sized gas giants — or could change where planets are formed altogether.
While it’s still unclear what’s going on in AS 205 N, the astronomers plan to follow up their work with observing other T Tauri stars. Maybe with more observations, they reason, they can better understand what these signatures are telling us.
The weird environment was spotted by astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a set of 66 radio telescopes in Chile. A paper based on the research was published in the Astrophysical Journal and is also available in preprint version on Arxiv.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! It’s going to be an awesome week as we watch the planets – Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Mercury – dance along the ecliptic plane. You don’t even need a telescope for this show! But that’s not all. We’ll take a look at a wealth of bright star clusters, challenging studies and lots more. I’ll see you in the back yard…
Sunday, February 19 – Today is the birthday of Nicolas Copernicus. Born in 1473, he was the creator of the modern solar system model which illustrated the retrograde motion of the outer planets. Considering this was well over 530 years ago, and in a rather “unenlightened” time, his revolutionary thinking about what we now consider natural is astounding.
Have you been observing retrograde motion while keeping track of Mars? Good for you! You may have also noticed that Mars has dimmed slightly over the last few weeks. Right now it’s around -1.0. Keep track of its many faces!
While we still have dark skies on our side, let’s head for a handful of difficult nebulae in a region just west of Gamma Monocerotis. For binoculars, check out the region around Gamma, it is rich in stars and very colorful! You are looking at the very outer edge of the Orion spiral arm of our galaxy. For small scopes, have a look at Gamma itself – it’s a triple system that we’ll be back to study. For larger scopes? It’s Herschel hunting time…
NGC 2183 (Right Ascension: 6 : 10.8 – Declination: -06 : 13 ) and NGC 2185 (Right Ascension: 6 : 11.1 – Declination: -06 : 13 ) will be the first you encounter as you move west of Gamma. Although they are faint, just remember they are nothing more than a cloud of dust illuminated by faint stars on the edge of the galactic realm. The stars that formed inside provided the light source for these wispy objects and at their edges lay in intergalactic space.
To the southwest is the weaker NGC 2182 (Right Ascension: 6 : 09.5 – Declination: -06 : 20), which will appear as nothing more than a faint star with an even fainter halo about it, with NGC 2170 (Right Ascension: 6 : 07.5 – Declination: -06 : 24) more strongly represented in an otherwise difficult field. While the views of these objects might seem vaguely disappointing, you must remember that not everything is as bright and colorful as seen in a photograph. Just knowing that you are looking at the collapse of a giant molecular cloud that’s 2400 light-years away is pretty impressive!
Monday, February 20 – Today in history celebrates the Mir space station launch in 1986. Mir (Russian for “peace”) was home to both cosmonauts and astronauts as it housed 28 long duration crews during its 15 years of service. To date it is one of the longest running space stations and a triumph for mankind. Spasiba! Today in 1962, John Glenn was onboard Friendship 7 and became the first American to orbit the Earth. As Colonel Glenn looked out the window, he reported seeing “fireflies” glittering outside his Mercury space capsule. Let’s see if we can find some…
The open cluster M41 (Right Ascension: 6 : 46.0 – Declination: -20 : 44) in Canis Major is just a quick drift south of the brightest star in the northern sky – Sirius. Even the smallest scopes and binoculars will reveal this rich group of mixed magnitude stars and fill the imagination with strange notions of reality. Through larger scopes, many faint groupings emerge as the star count rises to well over 100 members. Several stars of color – orange in particular – are also seen along with a number of doubles.
First noted telescopically by Giovanni Batista Hodierna in the mid-1500s, ancient texts indicate that Aristotle saw this naked-eye cluster some 1800 years earlier. Like other Hodierna discoveries, M41 was included on Messier’s list – along with even brighter clusters of antiquity such as Praesepe in Cancer and the Pleiades in Taurus. Open cluster M41 is located 2300 light years away and recedes from us at 34km/sec – about the speed Venus moves around the Sun. M41 is a mature cluster, around 200 million years old and 25 light years in diameter. Remember M41… Fireflies in night skies.
Tuesday, February 21 – Tonight is New Moon! Tonight let’s take a journey just a breath above Zeta Tauri and spend some quality time with a pulsar embedded in the most famous supernova remnant of all. Factually, we know the Crab Nebula to be the remains of an exploded star recorded by the Chinese in 1054. We know it to be a rapid expanding cloud of gas moving outward at a rate of 1,000 km per second, just as we understand there is a pulsar in the center. We also know it as first recorded by John Bevis in 1758, and then later cataloged as the beginning Messier object – penned by Charles himself some 27 years later to avoid confusion while searching for comets. We see it revealed beautifully in timed exposure photographs, its glory captured forever through the eye of the camera — but have you ever really taken the time to truly study M1 (Right Ascension: 5 : 34.5 – Declination: +22 : 01)? Then you just may surprise yourself…
In a small telescope, M1 might seem to be a disappointment – but do not just glance at it and move on. There is a very strange quality to the light which reaches your eye, even though initially it may just appear as a vague, misty patch. Allow your eyes to adjust and M1 will appear to have “living” qualities – a sense of movement in something that should be motionless. The “Crab” holds true to many other spectroscopic studies. The concept of differing light waves crossing over one another and canceling each other out – with each trough and crest revealing differing details to the eye – is never more apparent than during study. To observe M1 is to at one moment see a “cloud” of nebulosity, the next a broad ribbon or filament, and at another a dark patch. When skies are stable you may see an embedded star, and it is possible to see six such stars.
Many observers have the ability to see spectral qualities, but they need to be developed. From ionization to polarization – our eye and brain are capable of seeing to the edge of infra-red and ultra-violet. Even a novice can see the effects of magnetism in the solar “Wilson Effect.” But what of the spinning neutron star at M1’s heart? We’ve known since 1969 that M1 produces a “visual” pulsar effect. About once every five minutes, changes occurring in the neutron star’s pulsation affect the amount of polarization, causing the light waves to sweep around like a giant “cosmic lighthouse” and flash across our eyes. M1 is much more than just another Messier. Capture it tonight!!
Wednesday, February 22 – Today in 1966, Soviet space mission Kosmos 110 was launched. Its crew was canine, Veterok (Little Wind) Ugolyok (Little Piece of Coal); both history making dogs. The flight lasted 22 days and held the record for living creatures in orbit until 1974 – when Skylab 2 carried its three-man crew for 28 days.
Since we’ve studied the “death” of a star, why not take the time tonight to discover the “birth” of one? Our journey will start by identifying Aldeberan (Alpha Tauri) and move northwest to bright Epsilon. Hop 1.8 degrees west and slightly to the north for an incredibly unusual variable star – T Tauri.
Discovered by J.R. Hind in October 1852, T Tauri and its accompanying nebula, NGC 1555 (Right Ascension: 4 : 22.9 – Declination: +19 : 32), set the stage for discovery with a pre-main sequence variable star. Hind reported the nebula, but also noted that no catalog listed such an object in that position. His observations also included a 10th magnitude uncharted star and he surmised that the star in question was a variable. On each count Hind was right, and both were followed by astronomers for several years until they began to fade in 1861. By 1868, neither could be seen and it wasn’t until 1890 that the pair was re-discovered by E.E. Barnard and S.W. Burnham. Five years later? They vanished again.
T Tauri is the prototype of this particular class of variable stars and is itself totally unpredictable. In a period as short as a few weeks, it might move from magnitude 9 to 13 and other times remain constant for months on end. It is about equal to our own Sun in temperature and mass – and its spectral signature is very similar to Sol’s chromosphere – but the resemblance ends there. T Tauri is a star in the initial stages of birth!
T Tauri are all pre-main sequence and are considered “proto-stars”. In other words, they continuously contract and expand, shedding some of their mantle of gas and dust. This gas and dust is caught by the star’s rotation and spun into an accretion disc – which might be more properly referred to as a proto-planetary disc. By the time the jets have finished spewing and the material is pulled back to the star by gravity, the proto-star will have cooled enough to have reached main sequence and the pressure may have allowed planetoids to form from the accreted material.
Thursday, February 23 – If you have an open western horizon, then be out at twilight! Right now the speedy inner planet – Mercury – will make a brief appearance. Depending on your time zone, you might also spot a very young Moon just above it! For curiosity seekers, you can also find asteroid Vesta to the south of the Moon, along with planet Uranus to the south-east. How cool is that?!
In 1987, Ian Shelton made an astonishing visual discovery – SN 1987a. This was the brightest supernova in 383 years. More importantly, before it occurred, a blue star of roughly 20 solar masses was already known to exist in that same location within the Large Magellanic Cloud. Catalogued as Sanduleak -69-202, that star is now gone. With available data on the star, astronomers were able to get a “before and after” look at one of the most extraordinary events in the universe! Tonight, let’s have a look at a similar event known as “Tycho’s Supernova.”
Located northwest of Kappa Cassiopeia, SN1572 appeared so bright in that year that it could be seen with the unaided eye for six months. Since its appearance was contrary to Ptolemaic theory, this change in the night sky now supported Copernicus’ views and heliocentric theory gained credence. We now recognize it as a strong radio source, but can it still be seen? There is a remnant left of this supernova, and it is challenging even with a large telescope. Look for thin, faint filaments that form an incomplete ring around 8 arc minutes across.
Friday, February 24 – Tonight the slender first crescent of the Moon makes its presence known on the western horizon. Before it sets, take a moment to look at it with binoculars. The beginnings of Mare Crisium will show to the northeast quadrant, but look just a bit further south for the dark, irregular blotch of Mare Undarum – the Sea of Waves. On its southern edge, and to lunar east, look for the small Mare Smythii – the “Sea of Sir William Henry Smyth.” Further south of this pair and at the northern edge of Fecunditatis is Mare Spumans – the “Foaming Sea.” All three of these are elevated lakes of aluminous basalt belonging to the Crisium basin.
For telescope users, wait until the Moon has set and return to Beta Monocerotis and head about a fingerwidth northeast for an open cluster challenge – NGC 2250 (Right Ascension: 6 : 32.8 – Declination: -05 : 02). This vague collection of stars presents itself to the average telescope as about 10 or so members that form no real asterism and makes one wonder if it is indeed a cluster. So odd is this one, that a lot of star charts don’t even list it!
Today in 1968, during a radar search survey, the first pulsar was discovered by Jocelyn Bell. The co-directors of the project, Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle, matched these observations to a model of a rotating neutron star, winning them the 1974 Physics Nobel Prize and proving a theory of J. Robert Oppenheimer from 30 years earlier.
Would you like to get a look at a region of the sky that contains a pulsar? Then wait until the Moon has well westered and look for guidestar Alpha Monocerotis to the south and bright Procyon to its north. By using the distance between these two stars as the base of an imaginary triangle, you’ll find pulsar PSR 0820+02 at the apex of your triangle pointed east.
Saturday, February 25 – As the Moon begins its westward journey after sunset in a position much easier to observe. The lunar feature we are looking for is at the north-northeast of the lunar limb and its view is often dependent on libration. What are we seeking? “The Sea of Alexander von Humboldt”…
Mare Humboldtianum can sometimes be hidden from view because it is an extreme feature. Spanning 273 kilometers, the basin in which it is contained extends for an additional 600 kilometers and continues around to the far side of the Moon. The mountain ranges which accompany this basin can sometimes be glimpsed under perfect lighting conditions, but ordinarily are just seen as a lighter area. The mare was formed by lava flow into the impact basin, yet more recent strikes have scarred Humboldtianum. Look for a splash of ejecta from crater Hayn further north, and the huge, 200 kilometer strike of crater Bel’kovich on Humboldtianum’s northeast shore.
When the Moon begins to wester, let’s head for Beta Monocerotis and hop about 3 fingerwidths east for an 8.9 magnitude open cluster that can be spotted with binoculars and is well resolved with a small telescope – NGC 2302 (Right Ascension: 6 : 51.9 – Declination: -07 : 04). This very young stellar cluster resides at the outer edge of the Orion spiral arm. While binoculars will see a handful of stars in a small V-shaped pattern, telescope users should be able to resolve 40 or so fainter members.
Until next week, may all of your journeys be at light speed!
If you enjoy the weekly observing column, then you’ll love the book, The Night Sky Companion 2012 written by Tammy Plotner. This fully illustrated observing guide includes star charts for your favorite objects and much more!
Much like any living being, stars go through a natural cycle. This begins with birth, extends through a lifespan characterized by change and growth, and ends in death. Of course, we’re talking about stars here, and the way they’re born, live and die is completely different from any life form we are familiar with.
For one, the timescales are entirely different, lasting on the order of billions of years. Also, the changes they go through during their lifespan are entirely different too. And when they die, the consequences are, shall we say, much more visible? Let’s take a look at the life cycle of stars.
Stars start out as vast clouds of cold molecular gas. The gas cloud could be floating in a galaxy for millions of years, but then some event causes it to begin collapsing down under its own gravity. For example when galaxies collide, regions of cold gas are given the kick they need to start collapsing. It can also happen when the shockwave of a nearby supernova passes through a region.
As it collapses, the interstellar cloud breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces, and each one of these collapses inward on itself. Each of these pieces will become a star. As the cloud collapses, the gravitational energy causes it to heat up, and the conservation of momentum from all the individual particles causes it to spin.
As the stellar material pulls tighter and tighter together, it heats up pushing against further gravitational collapse. At this point, the object is known as a protostar. Surrounding the protostar is a circumstellar disk of additional material. Some of this continues to spiral inward, layering additional mass onto the star. The rest will remain in place and eventually form a planetary system.
Depending on the stars mass, the protostar phase of stellar evolution will be short compared to its overall life span. For those that have one Solar Mass (i.e the same mass as our Sun), it lasts about 1000,000 years.
A T Tauri star begins when material stops falling onto the protostar, and it’s releasing a tremendous amount of energy. They are so-named because of the prototype star used to research this phase of solar evolution – T Tauri, a variable star located in the direction of the Hyades cluster, about 600 light years from Earth.
A T Tauri star may be bright, but this all comes its gravitational energy from the collapsing material. The central temperature of a T Tauri star isn’t enough to support fusion at its core. Even so, T Tauri stars can appear as bright as main sequence stars. The T Tauri phase lasts for about 100 million years, after which the star will enter the longest phase of its development – the Main Sequence phase.
Eventually, the core temperature of a star will reach the point that fusion its core can begin. This is the process that all stars go through as they convert protons of hydrogen, through several stages, into atoms of helium. This reaction is exothermic; it gives off more heat than it requires, and so the core of a main sequence star releases a tremendous amount of energy.
This energy starts out as gamma rays in the core of the star, but as it takes a long slow journey out of the star, it drops down in wavelength. All of this light pushes outward on the star, and counteracts the gravitational force pulling it inward. A star at this stage of life is held in balance – as long as its supplies of hydrogen fuel lasts.
And how long does it last? It depends on the mass of the star. The least massive stars, like red dwarfs with half the mass of the Sun, can sip away at their fuel for hundreds of billions and even trillions of years. Larger stars, like our Sun will typically sit in the main sequence phase for 10-15 billion years. The largest stars have the shortest lives, and can last a few billion, and even just a few million years.
Over the course of its life, a star is converting hydrogen into helium at its core. This helium builds up and the hydrogen fuel runs out. When a star exhausts its fuel of hydrogen at its core, its internal nuclear reactions stop. Without this light pressure, the star begins to contract inward through gravity.
This process heats up a shell of hydrogen around the core which then ignites in fusion and causes the star to brighten up again, by a factor of 1,000-10,000. This causes the outer layers of the star to expand outward, increasing the size of the star many times. Our own Sun is expected to bloat out to a sphere that reaches all the way out to the orbit of the Earth.
The temperature and pressure at the core of the star will eventually reach the point that helium can be fused into carbon. Once a star reaches this point, it contracts down and is no longer a red giant. Stars much more massive than our Sun can continue on in this process, moving up the table of elements creating heavier and heavier atoms.
A star with the mass of our Sun doesn’t have the gravitational pressure to fuse carbon, so once it runs out of helium at its core, it’s effectively dead. The star will eject its outer layers into space, and then contract down, eventually becoming a white dwarf. This stellar remnant might start out hot, but it has no fusion reactions taking place inside it any more. It will cool down over hundreds of billions of years, eventually becoming the background temperature of the Universe.
We have written many articles about the live cycle of stars on Universe Today. Here’s What is the Life Cycle Of The Sun?, What is a Red Giant?, Will Earth Survive When the Sun Becomes a Red Giant?, What Is The Future Of Our Sun?
Want more information on stars? Here’s Hubblesite’s News Releases about Stars, and more information from NASA’s imagine the Universe.
We have recorded several episodes of Astronomy Cast about stars. Here are two that you might find helpful: Episode 12: Where Do Baby Stars Come From?, Episode 13: Where Do Stars Go When they Die?, and Episode 108: The Life of the Sun.
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A star is a star, right? Sure there are some difference in terms of color when you look up at the night sky. But they are all basically the same, big balls of gas burning up to billions of light years away, right? Well, not exactly. In truth, stars are about as diverse as anything else in our Universe, falling into one of many different classifications based on its defining characteristics.
All in all, there are many different types of stars, ranging from tiny brown dwarfs to red and blue supergiants. There are even more bizarre kinds of stars, like neutron stars and Wolf-Rayet stars. And as our exploration of the Universe continues, we continue to learn things about stars that force us to expand on the way we think of them. Let’s take a look at all the different types of stars there are.
A protostar is what you have before a star forms. A protostar is a collection of gas that has collapsed down from a giant molecular cloud. The protostar phase of stellar evolution lasts about 100,000 years. Over time, gravity and pressure increase, forcing the protostar to collapse down. All of the energy release by the protostar comes only from the heating caused by the gravitational energy – nuclear fusion reactions haven’t started yet.
A T Tauri star is stage in a star’s formation and evolution right before it becomes a main sequence star. This phase occurs at the end of the protostar phase, when the gravitational pressure holding the star together is the source of all its energy. T Tauri stars don’t have enough pressure and temperature at their cores to generate nuclear fusion, but they do resemble main sequence stars; they’re about the same temperature but brighter because they’re a larger. T Tauri stars can have large areas of sunspot coverage, and have intense X-ray flares and extremely powerful stellar winds. Stars will remain in the T Tauri stage for about 100 million years.
The majority of all stars in our galaxy, and even the Universe, are main sequence stars. Our Sun is a main sequence star, and so are our nearest neighbors, Sirius and Alpha Centauri A. Main sequence stars can vary in size, mass and brightness, but they’re all doing the same thing: converting hydrogen into helium in their cores, releasing a tremendous amount of energy.
A star in the main sequence is in a state of hydrostatic equilibrium. Gravity is pulling the star inward, and the light pressure from all the fusion reactions in the star are pushing outward. The inward and outward forces balance one another out, and the star maintains a spherical shape. Stars in the main sequence will have a size that depends on their mass, which defines the amount of gravity pulling them inward.
The lower mass limit for a main sequence star is about 0.08 times the mass of the Sun, or 80 times the mass of Jupiter. This is the minimum amount of gravitational pressure you need to ignite fusion in the core. Stars can theoretically grow to more than 100 times the mass of the Sun.
When a star has consumed its stock of hydrogen in its core, fusion stops and the star no longer generates an outward pressure to counteract the inward pressure pulling it together. A shell of hydrogen around the core ignites continuing the life of the star, but causes it to increase in size dramatically. The aging star has become a red giant star, and can be 100 times larger than it was in its main sequence phase. When this hydrogen fuel is used up, further shells of helium and even heavier elements can be consumed in fusion reactions. The red giant phase of a star’s life will only last a few hundred million years before it runs out of fuel completely and becomes a white dwarf.
When a star has completely run out of hydrogen fuel in its core and it lacks the mass to force higher elements into fusion reaction, it becomes a white dwarf star. The outward light pressure from the fusion reaction stops and the star collapses inward under its own gravity. A white dwarf shines because it was a hot star once, but there’s no fusion reactions happening any more. A white dwarf will just cool down until it becomes the background temperature of the Universe. This process will take hundreds of billions of years, so no white dwarfs have actually cooled down that far yet.
Red dwarf stars are the most common kind of stars in the Universe. These are main sequence stars but they have such low mass that they’re much cooler than stars like our Sun. They have another advantage. Red dwarf stars are able to keep the hydrogen fuel mixing into their core, and so they can conserve their fuel for much longer than other stars. Astronomers estimate that some red dwarf stars will burn for up to 10 trillion years. The smallest red dwarfs are 0.075 times the mass of the Sun, and they can have a mass of up to half of the Sun.
If a star has between 1.35 and 2.1 times the mass of the Sun, it doesn’t form a white dwarf when it dies. Instead, the star dies in a catastrophic supernova explosion, and the remaining core becomes a neutron star. As its name implies, a neutron star is an exotic type of star that is composed entirely of neutrons. This is because the intense gravity of the neutron star crushes protons and electrons together to form neutrons. If stars are even more massive, they will become black holes instead of neutron stars after the supernova goes off.
The largest stars in the Universe are supergiant stars. These are monsters with dozens of times the mass of the Sun. Unlike a relatively stable star like the Sun, supergiants are consuming hydrogen fuel at an enormous rate and will consume all the fuel in their cores within just a few million years. Supergiant stars live fast and die young, detonating as supernovae; completely disintegrating themselves in the process.
As you can see, stars come in many sizes, colors and varieties. Knowing what accounts for this, and what their various life stages look like, are all important when it comes to understanding our Universe. It also helps when it comes to our ongoing efforts to explore our local stellar neighborhood, not to mention in the hunt for extra-terrestrial life!
We have written many articles about stars on Universe Today. Here’s What is the Biggest Star in the Universe?, What is a Binary Star?, Do Stars Move?, What are the Most Famous Stars?, What is the Brightest Star in the Sky, Past and Future?
Want more information on stars? Here’s Hubblesite’s News Releases about Stars, and more information from NASA’s imagine the Universe.
We have recorded several episodes of Astronomy Cast about stars. Here are two that you might find helpful: Episode 12: Where Do Baby Stars Come From, and Episode 13: Where Do Stars Go When they Die?