At the heart of the Stingray Nebula some 2,700 light years from Earth lies a small , aging star have sex as SAO 244567 . uranologist have been observing it on and off for decades , and they can now sustain they ’ve find something amazing : a never - before - seen leading spiritual rebirth .
From 1971 to 2002 , the surface temperature of SAO 244567 skyrocketed , from 20,000 to intimately 60,000 stage Celsius . At the same clock time , the star reduce , shrinking from about four times the size of our Sun to just a third of its diameter . Now , observationsmade with the Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the star has begin to cool off and spread out again , its surface temperature waning to a half-hearted 50,000 degree Celsius in recent years .
What on Earth is go on here ? Nicole Reindl , an stargazer at the University of Leicester who has been studying SAO 244567 for days , believe we ’ve just find the before and after of a “ He flash , ” an unusual astronomical phenomena believed to occur during the red giant phase of certain low - mass stars . Essentially , as the H in the superstar ’s core is exhausted , atomic number 2 waste is left behind , increasing the temperature and concentration of the core until it it becomes red-hot enough for atomic number 2 to fire .
Then , you get the flash — a abbreviated but fantastically intense time period of helium fusion that cause the whizz to expand and brighten considerably . “ The vent of nuclear Energy Department by the flash power the already very compact star to expand back to elephantine dimensions — the born - again scenario , ” Reindlexplained in a financial statement .
It ’s not the first sentence astronomers have analyse such a star , but it is the first chance we ’ve had to witness both the heating and cooling phases of this sort of transformation . The appendage of stellar evolution typically play out over one thousand thousand to billion of class . get to see a star evolve in mere decades reminds just how dynamic our cosmic neighborhood is — and how trivial we genuinely realize about the strength shaping it .
[ Hubble News ]
AstronomyAstrophysicsSpacestars
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