Latest Binary star Stories
NASA -- For astronomers, it's always been a source of frustration that the nearest white-dwarf star is buried in the glow of the brightest star in the nighttime sky. This burned-out stellar remnant is a faint companion of the brilliant blue-white Dog Star, Sirius, located in the winter constellation Canis Major.Now, an international team of astronomers has used the keen eye of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to isolate the light from the white dwarf, called Sirius B. The new results allow them...
ESA -- ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has discovered a new, highly populated class of X-ray fast 'transient' binary stars, undetected in previous observations. With this discovery, Integral confirms how much it is contributing to revealing a whole hidden Universe. The new class of double star systems is characterised by a very compact object that produces highly energetic, recurrent and fast-growing X-ray outbursts, and a very luminous 'supergiant' companion. The compact object can...
Cambridge, MA -- What did the very first stars look like? How did they live and die? Astronomers have ideas, but no proof. The first stars are so distant and formed so long ago that they are invisible to our best telescopes. Until they explode. Hypernovas (more powerful cousins of supernovas) and their associated gamma-ray bursts offer astronomers the possibility of detecting light from the first generations of stars. NASA's Swift satellite already has seen a gamma-ray burst (GRB) with a...
Cambridge, MA -- Newborn stars are difficult to photograph. They tend to hide in the nebulous stellar nurseries where they formed, enshrouded by thick layers of dust. Now, Smithsonian astronomer T.K. Sridharan (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and his colleagues have photographed a pair of stellar twins in infrared light, which penetrates the dust. And these babies are whoppers, weighing several times the mass of the Sun. Moreover, Sridharan's images reveal a circumstellar disk...
AAVSO -- Amateur astronomers are being asked to help a constellation of observatories unravel the mysteries of a puzzling binary star system. On August 30-August 31, 2005 two space-based and four professional ground-based observatories are scheduled to observe the cataclysmic variable star AE Aqr. Each of the observatories covers a different wavelength of light and amateur astronomers have been asked to help cover the visible-light portion. "This observing campaign will take place over nearly...
A team of astronomers from The Netherlands and the UK has discovered a vast "˜jet-powered bubble' formed in the gas around a black hole in the Milky Way.  The discovery means that for decades scientists have been severely underestimating how much power black holes pump back into the universe instead of merely swallowing material across their event horizons.Jets of energy and particles flowing outwards at close to the speed of light are a common feature of all accreting black holes,...
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - In a scenario out of "Star Wars," astronomers have detected a planet outside our solar system with not one, but three suns, a finding that challenges astronomers' theories of planetary formation. The planet, a gas giant slightly larger than Jupiter, orbits the main star of a triple-star system known as HD 188753 in the constellation Cygnus ("The Swan"). The stellar trio and its planet are about 149 light-years from Earth and about as close to each other as...
ESA -- An international team of scientists has uncovered a rare type of neutron star so elusive that it took three satellites to identify it. The findings, made with ESA's Integral satellite and two NASA satellites, reveals new insights about star birth and death in our Galaxy. We report this discovery, highlighting the complementary nature of European and US spacecraft, on the day in which ESA's Integral celebrates 1000 days in orbit. The neutron star, called IGR J16283-4838, is an...
NRAO -- Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope have tracked the motion of a violent region where the powerful winds of two giant stars slam into each other. The collision region moves as the stars, part of a binary pair, orbit each other, and the precise measurement of its motion was the key to unlocking vital new information about the stars and their winds.Both stars are much more massive than the Sun -- one about 20 times the mass...
RAS -- New supercomputer simulations may help explain periodic bursts of light emitted by compact binary star systems. Cataclysmic variables are binary systems that consist of a white dwarf and a normal star. The dense white dwarf drags material from its companion star, creating an accretion disc of matter around itself, and a hotspot develops where the gas stream from the star crashes into the accretion disc. On Wednesday 6th April at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Birmingham, Dr...
Latest Binary star Reference Libraries
X-ray Burster -- X-ray bursters are a class of binary stars which are luminous in X-rays. They contain a neutron star and a low-mass companion star. The companion fills its Roche lobe and therefore the neutron star is accreting matter from it. The inflowing gas forms an accretion disk around the neutron star. Sometimes X-ray bursters show a sudden increase in their X-ray luminosity, called X-ray burst. All properties of the X-ray bursts can be explained assuming that they result from...
X-ray Binaries -- X-ray binaries are a class of binary stars that are very luminous in X-rays. The X-rays are produced by matter falling from one component (usually a relatively normal star) to the other component, which is a neutron star or a black hole. The infalling matter releases gravitational potential energy, up to several tens of per cent of its rest mass as X-rays. (Hydrogen fusion releases about 0.7 per cent of rest mass) X-ray binaries are further subdivided into...
Triple Star -- A triple star system consists of three gravitationally bound stars. The stars are in orbits around a common center of mass, usually so that two of the stars form a close binary star and the third is further away. This configuration is often called a hierarchical triple star. Multiple stars containing more than three stars can usually be decomposed to binaries and single stars that are in a hierachically bound system. ----- Click here to learn more on this...
Nova -- A nova is an enormous nuclear explosion caused by the accretion of hydrogen onto the surface of a white dwarf star. When a white dwarf has a close companion star, the companion will often begin to have its outer atmosphere drawn away from it by the white dwarf's gravity as the companion star ages and expands into a red giant. The gases so captured consist primarily of hydrogen and helium, the two principle constituents of matter in the universe. The gases are compacted on the...
Double Star -- When two stars are so nearly in the same direction as seen from Earth that they appear to be a single star to the naked eye but may be separated by the use of telescopes, they are referred to as a double star. There are two different kinds of double star. In the case where two stars are only apparently close to each other, but which are in fact separated by a great distance are known as optical doubles or optical binaries. In the vast majority of cases, however, the two...
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