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Hubble captures outstanding views of mammoth stars
November 26, 2008Two of our Galaxy's most massive stars have been scrutinised in an impressive view by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. They have, until recently, been shrouded in mystery, but the new image shows them in greater detail than ever before.
The image shows a pair of colossal stars, WR 25 and Tr16-244, located within the open cluster Trumpler 16. This cluster is embedded within the Carina Nebula, an immense cauldron of gas and dust that lies approximately 7500 light-years from Earth. The Carina Nebula contains several ultra-hot stars, including these two star systems and the famous blue star Eta Carinae, which has the highest luminosity yet confirmed. As well as producing incredible amounts of heat, these stars are also very bright, emitting most of their radiation in the ultraviolet and appearing blue in colour. They are so powerful that they burn through their hydrogen fuel source faster than other types of stars, leading to a "live fast, die young" lifestyle.
WR 25 is the brightest, situated near the centre of the image. The neighbouring Tr16-244 is the third brightest, just to the upper left of WR 25. The second brightest, to the left of WR 25, is a low mass star located much closer to the Earth than the Carina Nebula. Stars like WR 25 and Tr16-244 are relatively rare compared to other, cooler types. They interest astronomers because they are associated with star-forming nebulae, and influence the structure and evolution of galaxies.
WR 25 is likely to be the most massive and interesting of the two. Its true nature was revealed two years ago when an international group of astronomers led by Roberto Gamen, then at the Universidad de La Serena in Chile, discovered that it is composed of at least two stars. The more massive is a Wolf-Rayet star and may weigh more than 50 times the mass of our Sun. It is losing mass rapidly through powerful stellar winds that have expelled the majority of its outermost hydrogen-rich layers, while its more mundane binary companion is probably about half as massive as the Wolf-Rayet star, and orbits around it once every 208 days.
Massive stars are usually formed in compact clusters. Often the individual stars are so physically close to each other that it is very difficult to resolve them in telescopes as separate objects. These Hubble observations have revealed that the Tr16-244 system is actually a triple star. Two of the stars are so close to each other that they look like a single object, but Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys shows them as two (see the separate image). The third star takes tens or hundreds of thousands of years to orbit the other two. The brightness and proximity of the components of such massive double and triple stars makes it particularly challenging to discover the properties of massive stars.
WR 25 and Tr16-244 are the likely sources of radiation that is causing a giant gas globule within the Carina Nebula to slowly evaporate away into space, while possibly inducing the formation of new stars within it . The radiation is also thought to be responsible for the globule's interesting shape, prominently featured in earlier Hubble images, which looks like a hand with a "defiant" finger pointing towards WR 25 and Tr16-244 (see separate image).
These new observations were obtained by a team including astronomers from US, Chilean, Spanish, and Argentine institutions and led by Jesús Maíz Apellániz from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain. They are using Hubble as well as ground-based observatories in Spain, Chile, and Argentina to build a comprehensive catalogue of observations of all the massive stars in the Galaxy that are detectable at visible wavelengths.
ESA/Hubble Information Centre
WR 25 is likely to be the most massive and interesting of the two. Its true nature was revealed two years ago when an international group of astronomers led by Roberto Gamen, then at the Universidad de La Serena in Chile, discovered that it is composed of at least two stars. The more massive is a Wolf-Rayet star and may weigh more than 50 times the mass of our Sun. It is losing mass rapidly through powerful stellar winds that have expelled the majority of its outermost hydrogen-rich layers, while its more mundane binary companion is probably about half as massive as the Wolf-Rayet star, and orbits around it once every 208 days.
Massive stars are usually formed in compact clusters. Often the individual stars are so physically close to each other that it is very difficult to resolve them in telescopes as separate objects. These Hubble observations have revealed that the Tr16-244 system is actually a triple star. Two of the stars are so close to each other that they look like a single object, but Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys shows them as two (see the separate image). The third star takes tens or hundreds of thousands of years to orbit the other two. The brightness and proximity of the components of such massive double and triple stars makes it particularly challenging to discover the properties of massive stars.
WR 25 and Tr16-244 are the likely sources of radiation that is causing a giant gas globule within the Carina Nebula to slowly evaporate away into space, while possibly inducing the formation of new stars within it . The radiation is also thought to be responsible for the globule's interesting shape, prominently featured in earlier Hubble images, which looks like a hand with a "defiant" finger pointing towards WR 25 and Tr16-244 (see separate image).
These new observations were obtained by a team including astronomers from US, Chilean, Spanish, and Argentine institutions and led by Jesús Maíz Apellániz from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain. They are using Hubble as well as ground-based observatories in Spain, Chile, and Argentina to build a comprehensive catalogue of observations of all the massive stars in the Galaxy that are detectable at visible wavelengths.
ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Hubble Space Telescope Current Events and Hubble Space Telescope News RSSGoddard team develops new carriers for space station
In a partnership that exemplifies One NASA, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. teamed up with engineers at NASA's Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers to design, build, and test five new ExPRESS Logistics Carriers, or ELCs, which will be delivered to the International Space Station.
'Dropouts' pinpoint earliest galaxies
Astronomers, conducting the broadest survey to date of galaxies from about 800 million years after the Big Bang, have found 22 early galaxies and confirmed the age of one by its characteristic hydrogen signature at 787 million years post Big Bang.
Opening up a colorful cosmic jewel box
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Scientists use world's fastest supercomputer to model origins of the unseen universe
Understanding dark energy is the number one issue in explaining the universe, according to Salman Habib, of the Laboratory's Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology group.
Rebirth of an icon: Hubble's first images since Servicing Mission 4
Astronomers today declared the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory ready for a new decade of exploration, with the release of observations from four of its six operating science instruments.
Astronomers discover stars in early galaxies had a need for speed
A team of astronomers has measured the motions of stars in a very distant galaxy for the first time and discovered they are whizzing around at astonishingly high speeds-about one million miles per hour, or twice the speed at which the Sun circles our own Milky Way galaxy.
Dark Energy From the Ground Up: Make Way for BigBOSS
Several ways have been proposed to examine dark energy, in hopes of finding out just what it is. One of them, "supernovae" for short, certainly works: it's how dark energy was discovered in the first place. Other independent techniques, such as weak gravitational lensing and baryon acoustic oscillation, also promise great power but are as yet unproven.
Hubble captures rare Jupiter collision
The checkout and calibration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been interrupted to aim the recently refurbished observatory at a new expanding spot on the giant planet Jupiter.
NASA celebrates Chandra X-Ray Observatory's 10th anniversary
Ten years ago, on July 23, 1999, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched aboard the space shuttle Columbia and deployed into orbit.
Jupiter pummeled, leaving bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean
Something slammed into Jupiter in the last few days, creating a dark bruise about the size of the Pacific Ocean.
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