Twin monster stars are merging, in a confirmation of a long-held theory on how supermassive stars are born. A Spanish astronomy team reports the eclipsing binary star system, known as MY Camelopardalis (MY Cam), in the journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics. From Earth, the system's two gigantic stars appear to eclipse one another almost every day, as they circle on a very tight orbit.
By looking at the high-resolution spectra of the two stars with the powerful 2.2-meter telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in southern Spain, the researchers, led by Javier Lorenzo of Spain's Universidad de Alicante, were able to determine the physical properties of each of the stars, including their surface temperatures and sizes.
The two hot, blue stars, weighing in at 38 and 32 times the mass of our sun, complete orbits of each other in less than 1.2 days. That is so close that the team concludes they are inevitably destined to merge into a single behemoth star, one that will have an astounding 60 times the mass of the sun.
The authors of the recently published study show that MY Cam is already one of the heftiest binary star systems ever seen. In fact, the two stars are likely close enough that their outer atmospheres are already touching and interacting. They are also rotating around each other at whopping speeds of 621,000 miles (one million kilometers) per hour.
Read about astronomical eclipses here.
The only things that you need to watch the Geminid meteor shower, the annual display in the December sky, are warm clothes. Carlton Pryor, a professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy said, "They’re actually one of the better meteor showers of the year – except it’s not always pleasant to be outside.”
The Geminid meteor shower is produced by a rocky asteroid and partially breaks off with each near-miss of the sun in its orbit, sending debris toward the Earth, Pryor said. The little bits of sand and space dust hit the Earth’s atmosphere, causing streaks in the sky viewable by the naked eye, he added.
The best way to view the meteor shower is to find the darkest sky possible, preferably in a rural area, find a comfortable spot with the best vantage point of the northern sky, and glance straight up, Pryor said. The peak time will be midnight to 2 a.m. Saturday night into Sunday morning.
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A strange galaxy called J1649+2635, nearly 800 million light-years from Earth, has astronomers scratching their heads … but in a good way.
Like our Milky Way, it’s a spiral galaxy, and it’s the most recent of only four known galaxies with prominent jets of subatomic particles propelled outward from its core at nearly light speed.
The mystery is that spiral galaxies aren’t supposed to have such large jets. It took a combined effort of astronomers and citizen scientists to discover J1649+2635 and shed light on the mystery.
According to a December 2, 2014 press release from The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the first spiral galaxy with a jet was found in 2003. The second was found in 2011, and the third was found earlier this year. All three spiral galaxies with jets were discovered by combining radio and visible-light images.
But how did the observatory team figure out? Read about the discovery here.
