Astronomy's Latest

MEKer · #1 12-01-2011, 08:35 PM

At Barnes+Noble last week, reading latest "Astronomy" magazine.
3 things new that I found fascinating:

1. "Y-Dwarf" stars, small and only 80 degrees farenheit, refered to as failed stars, but stars nonetheless. Report says they have found a few so far, closest one about 9 light years away. Weird!

2. A binary system--2 stars circling each other, another except one star has transformed into a solid crystal, made of carbon and oxygen. They call it a diamond the size of the moon or earth or something. Now that's really weird.

3. A time lapse of a gillion photos caught the destruction of a star by a Black Hole. Actually caught. They show 4 photos of the whole series. I don't know how long the time was they focused on the area or how often they went back to it, but they show Photo One with some stars and a completely, apparently vacant area they say is a Black Hole. Photo 2 shows the nearer upper right star start to elongate toward the void area. Photo 3 shows an accretion disc forming at the event horizon and dragging material from the hapless star and then Photo 4 show the star really stretched and getting torn up. Be interesting to know over what span of time this all developed. Very, very cool!

No "Astronomy" magazine is not a hack tabloid.

fdeck · #2 12-01-2011, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MEKer

small and only 80 degrees farenheit, refered to as failed stars, but stars nonetheless

Sounds like Texas.

i_got_a_mohawk · #3 12-02-2011, 08:02 AM

With the exception of the pictures of a star being gobbled up (which was over quite a few media sources earlier in the week), none of that is new

I still think neutrino stars are pretty amazing, IIRC they are as close as you can get to a perfectly smooth sphere, there must be some interesting science that could be done with those immense gravitational forces too.

MEKer · #4 12-02-2011, 06:40 PM

Yeah, I'd not heard anything about them. Fantastic stuff. I like the ones that don't nova and end up as just a dense chunk of pure iron hangin' up there in space (I think it is a brown dwarf?). That's so frickin' weird to me. A star....ends up as a chunk of iron. Sheesh. And it once was glorious and macho---!!!!