Glowing Red Eye: Cosmic Bubble Surrounds Odd 'Carbon Star'
Gorgeous new imagery shows the enormous, glowing bubble that a strange, dying red star has blown around itself.
The huge star, known as U Antliae, lies about 900 light-years from Earth, in the southern constellation Antlia (the Air Pump). U Antliae has burned all the hydrogen and helium in its core and has therefore moved on to the "asymptotic giant branch" (AGB), the last major step in the life cycle of a sun-like star before it becomes a superdense white dwarf .
https://www.space.com/38202-carbon-star-bubble-alma-photos-video.html
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I thought you might like a picture of it:
One great thing about Newsvine was that there you'd often got a picture to accompany your seed, not having them here is a real bummer.
Thanks for the pictures people!
Oh, but you do!
You have save the picture to a file you can find. Put your cursor on the paragraph where you want the picture to appear, then click the little fimstrip icon on your menu for the comment. Click on Upload a picture, then you can size and space your picture, select it, and insert it! Every comment box has the tool!
Great seed Matti.
If you want the entire article with photos, just do a copy and paste of the article.
Thanks!
I'll test what happens here if I copy&paste the whole thing, but we need to keep in mind the fair use policy
Gorgeous new imagery shows the enormous, glowing bubble that a strange, dying red star has blown around itself.
The huge star, known as U Antliae, lies about 900 light-years from Earth, in the southern constellation Antlia (the Air Pump). U Antliae has burned all the hydrogen and helium in its core and has therefore moved on to the "asymptotic giant branch" (AGB), the last major step in the life cycle of a sun-like star before it becomes a superdense white dwarf .
U Antliae is a carbon star, an AGB star whose atmosphere contains more carbon than oxygen.
A few millennia ago, U Antliae erupted in a spasm of activity that generated a big bubble, a surprisingly thin structure that astronomers have now studied using the European Southern Observatory's Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a network of radio telescopes in northern Chile. [ Amazing Space Photos by the ALMA Observatory ]
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/F. Kerschbaum
"Around 2,700 years ago, U Antliae went through a short period of rapid mass loss," ESO officials wrote in a statement . "During this period of only a few hundred years, the material making up the shell seen in the new ALMA data was ejected at high speed. Examination of this shell in further detail also shows some evidence of thin, wispy gas clouds known as filamentary substructures."
ALMA captured the bubble in multiple wavelengths of light, producing a 3D "data cube" that researchers have mined in detail. For example, the imagery shows gases in the bubble moving toward or away from the observer at different speeds, ESO officials said.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), F. Kerschbaum
Analyzing such stellar bubbles could help astronomers better understand the evolution of stars and galaxies, ESO officials added.
"Shells such as the one around U Antliae show a rich variety of chemical compounds based on carbon and other elements," the officials wrote in the same statement. "They also help to recycle matter and contribute up to 70 percent of the dust between stars."
The new ALMA imagery is part of a study, led by Franz Kerschbaum of the University of Vienna, that has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+ . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook or Google+ . Originally published on Space.com .
Well, what do you know. It works!
I shall keep this in mind and at limited use so I won't be stealing too much from anyone.
Thanks for the guidance, these tips always make my day!
Great, happy to help Matti.
Bravo, Matti!