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 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. Hubble finds double Einstein ring The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string. Galaxy may hold hundreds of rogue black holes If the latest simulation of what happens when black holes merge is correct, there could be hundreds of rogue black holes, each weighing several thousand times the mass of the sun, roaming around the Milky Way galaxy. Hubble finds that "blue blobs" in space are orphaned clusters of stars Hubble has revealed that mysterious "blue blobs" in a structure called Arp's Loop between M81 and M82 are blue clusters of stars less than 200 million years old with many stars as young as, and even younger than, 10 million years. White Dwarf Pulses Like a Pulsar New observations from Suzaku, a joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA X-ray observatory, have challenged scientists' conventional understanding of white dwarfs. Observers had believed white dwarfs were inert stellar corpses that slowly cool and fade away, but the new data tell a completely different story. More Solar Masses Current Events and Solar Masses News Articles |
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