[ad_1]
A new study from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has deciphered the mystery of a nebula detected 16 years ago, which appears to have its origins in the crash of the two stars which merged to form a file bright spheroid, one of a kind.
The research on this object, different from all those that had been recognized in the Milky Way, began in 2004, from Galaxy Explorer (GALEX) space-based, designed to study the history of star formation.
Scientists noticed the presence of a large, faint gas blob with a star in the center. Among all, a blue spot stood out caused by a thick ring placed inside it, so they identified it “Blue Ring Nebula”.
Although the images captured by GALEX showed that bluish halo, it does not actually emit light visible to the human eye, so experts have dedicated themselves to studying it with multiple means, from ground-based to space-based telescopes, “but the more they learned, the more it seemed. mysterious “.
For more than a decade, specialists have turned to cutting-edge theoretical models in which they have applied the vast amount of data collected over time. As a result, the study was published in “Nature”, which revealed the composition of the Blue Ring Nebula.
Read also: NASA shows the chime of nebulae and stars
NASA researchers said that although fused star systems are very common, their study takes a long time after their formation. This is because at the time of their origin they are obscured by the debris that caused the collision and later become difficult to identify because they bear a strong resemblance to unfused stars.
Despite the similarity between the star systems, the researchers differentiated the fact that the nebula had a living star in the center and also noted that it did not radiate light, which distinguished it from other types of supernova remnants and planetary nebulae.
A couple of years after starting the research work at GALEX, found evidence of a shock wave in the nebula, suggesting that the gas that composes it was ejected by a violent event around the central star.
“For quite a while we thought that maybe there was a planet several times the mass of Jupiter being torn apart by the star, and it was throwing all that gas out of the system,” recalls Mark Seibert, Carnegie Institution astrophysicist and team member. GALEX.
This idea lasted until 2012, when a space telescope studied the sky in infrared light, identifying a disk of dust orbiting near the star. Eventually, the team proved that the disc and material ejected into space came from an object larger than a giant planet. something bigger than. In 2017, Habitable Zone Planet Finder on the Hobby-Eberly telescope confirmed that there was no compact object orbiting the star.
In this way, NASA experts concluded that the event that produced the nebula was a stellar merger between a star similar to our Sun and a small one. As the first of these stars was nearing the end of its life, it began to approach the smaller spheroid, causing it to break and fall. Later, they were both wrapped in a ring of debris.
As for the bluish halo, the scientists explained that it is a consequence of two faint cone-shaped clouds of debris, which is why they are imperceptible to the human eye. However, the area where the cones overlapped formed the central blue ring observed by GALEX.
The brightness of this phenomenon, responsible for the detection by GALEX, intensified with the passage of time, when the collisions excited the hydrogen molecules, causing them to radiate at a specific wavelength of incandescent ultraviolet light.
Read also: This is what the unusual Egg Nebula looks like
During the research work, a group of astronomers gradually came together, adding their knowledge to obtain new data. This was the case with astrophysicist Brian Metzger, which through mathematical and computational models, applied to cosmic phenomena, was able to predict the behavior of the nebula.
Chris Martin, Principal Investigator at GALEX, revealed that with Metzger, as part of the job, progress was visibly rushed. “It wasn’t just that Brian could explain the data we were looking at; he was essentially predicting what we had observed before we saw it. He was saying, ‘If this is a stellar merger, you should see X’, and it was like, ‘Yes! We see it! ‘”He said.
NASA added that stellar mergers can occur in the Milky Way with a frequency of about 10 years. “We think there are likely many young remnants of stellar mergers in our galaxy, and the Blue Ring Nebula could show us what they are like so we can identify more,” they said.
nrv
.
[ad_2]
Source link
