Star on a Hubble dietDecember 12, 2006How heavy can a star be? This conundrum has haunted astronomers for decades. Theory indicates that there should be an upper stellar mass limit somewhere between 120 and 300 solar masses. Even though heavy stars are very bright, measurements of their masses can be complicated. The majority of the heaviest stars - some researchers say as many as 90% or maybe even more - tend to be born in multiple systems that can easily disguise themselves as single very heavy stars. Moreover, these stellar heavyweights are so rare that only a few are close enough to the Sun to be examined in detail. One of the top candidates for the title of "Milky Way stellar heavyweight champion" was, until now, Pismis 24-1, a bright young star that lies in the core of the small open star cluster Pismis 24 (the bright stars in the Hubble image) about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Pismis 24-1 was thought to have an incredibly large mass of 200 to 300 solar masses. This would have made it by far the most massive known star in the Milky Way. New NASA/ESA Hubble measurements of the star, have, however, resolved Pismis 24-1 into two separate stars, and, in doing so, have "halved\\\ ESA/Hubble Information Centre |
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| Related Solar Masses Current Events and Solar Masses News Articles XMM-Newton uncovers a celestial Rosetta stone ESA's XMM-Newton orbiting X-ray telescope has uncovered a celestial Rosetta stone: the first close-up of a white dwarf star, circling a companion star, that could explode into a particular kind of supernova in a few million years. Birth of a star predicted The astrophysicist João Alves, director of the Calar Alto Observatory in Almeria, and his colleague Andreas Bürkert, from the German observatory in the University of Munich, believe that "the inevitable future of the starless cloud Barnard 68" is to collapse and give rise to a new star, according to an article which has been published recently in The Astrophysical Journal. XMM-Newton takes astronomers to a black hole's edge Using new data from ESA's XMM-Newton spaceborne observatory, astronomers have probed closer than ever to a supermassive black hole lying deep at the core of a distant active galaxy. New understanding of the origin of galaxies advanced A new theory as to how galaxies were formed in the Universe billions of years ago has been formulated by Hebrew University of Jerusalem cosmologists. The theory takes issue with the prevailing view on how the galaxies came to exist. 1843 stellar eruption may be new type of star explosion Eta Carinae, the galaxy's biggest, brightest and perhaps most studied star after the sun, has been keeping a secret: Its giant outbursts appear to be driven by an entirely new type of stellar explosion that is fainter than a typical supernova and does not destroy the star. The quiet explosion A European-led team of astronomers are providing hints that a recent supernova may not be as normal as initially thought. Instead, the star that exploded is now understood to have collapsed into a black hole, producing a weak jet, typical of much more violent events, the so-called gamma-ray bursts. Galaxies gone wild! Interacting galaxies are found throughout the Universe, sometimes as dramatic collisions that trigger bursts of star formation, on other occasions as stealthy mergers that result in new galaxies. NASA scientists identify smallest known black hole Using a new technique, two NASA scientists have identified the lightest known black hole. With a mass only about 3.8 times greater than our Sun and a diameter of only 15 miles, the black hole lies very close to the minimum size predicted for black holes that originate from dying stars. Black hole found in enigmatic Omega Centauri A new discovery has resolved some of the mystery surrounding Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky. Images obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and data obtained by the GMOS spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope in Chile show that Omega Centauri appears to harbour an elusive intermediate-mass black hole in its centre. Neutron stars can be more massive, while black holes are more rare, Arecibo Observatory finds Neutron stars and black holes aren't all they've been thought to be. In fact, neutron stars can be considerably more massive than previously believed, and it is more difficult to form black holes, according to new research developed by using the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. More Solar Masses Current Events and Solar Masses News Articles |
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