Latest Star types Stories
Watch the video "Chandra Captures Neutron Star In Action" redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online New video footage of the Vela pulsar, a neutron star located approximately 1,000 light-years from Earth, suggests that the pulsar could be slowly wobbling as it spins, NASA officials said on Monday. Formed following the collapse of a massive star, the Vela pulsar is approximately 12 miles in diameter and capable of making a complete rotation in under 90 milliseconds. The...
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Unlike with some blockbuster films, the sequel to a movie from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is better than the first. This latest movie features a deeper look at a fast moving jet of particles produced by a rapidly rotating neutron star, and may provide new insight into the nature of some of the densest matter in the universe. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The hero of this Chandra movie is the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Researchers reported in the journal Physical Review Letters that they have found a "glitch" in a 40-year-old theory explaining the periodic speeding up or "glitching" of pulsars. Pulsars emit a rotating beam of electromagnetic radiation, which can be detected by powerful telescopes once it sweeps past the Earth. The cosmic objects, which are highly magnetized rotating neutron stars formed from the remains of supernovae, rotate at...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online University of Southampton researchers reported in The Astrophysical Journal that they have observed bright X-ray flares in a nearby galaxy being produced by a white dwarf. The team made the discovery by detecting a dramatic, short-lived X-ray flare that was picked up by an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station (ISS). Astronomers used optical telescopes in South Africa and Chile to help observe the flare, called...
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Using computer simulations, scientists from the NASA Astrobiology Institute team at the University of Hawaii are shedding light on a question that has challenged astronomers for years: What causes wide binary stars? (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) Binary stars are pairs of stars that orbit each other. Wide binary stars are separated by as much as one light-year in their orbits, farther apart than some...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists have reported in the journal Nature that they have figured out by using computer simulations how wide binary stars are able to form. Wide binary stars are two stars that orbit each other at a distance up to a light year. Some binary stars can be very close, while other pairs are extremely far apart. Astronomers have known about wide binary pairs for a long time, but how they form has remained a mystery. Now, astronomers...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online - Video 1 | Video 2 | Video 3 Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that the outer region of a dusty disc encircling a brown dwarf contains solid grains like those found in denser discs of newborn stars. The find challenges theories of how rock, Earth-scale planets form, suggesting the planets may be more common in the Universe than expected. Scientists believe rocky planets form...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A type of oddly dim exploding star is probably a class of duds, a new study using supercomputer simulations finds, but one that could throw new light on the mysterious nature of dark energy. Thousands of exploding stars are classified as type Ia supernovae, and most of them look similar to each other. This is why astrophysicists use them as accurate cosmic distance indicators, they show that the expansion of the universe is...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new image released by the European Space Agency (ESA) shows the aftershock of a stellar explosion coming from supernova remnant W44. W44 is about 10,000 light-years away from Earth in a forest of dense star-forming clouds in the constellation of Aquila. ESA said the image is one of the best examples of a supernova remnant interacting with its parent molecular cloud. The supernova remnant measures about 100 light-years across....
[ Watch the Video: Artists Impression of Free-Floating Planet ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have identified a body that is most likely a planet wandering throughout space without a parent star. The free-floating planet candidate is the closet such object to the Solar System observed so far, lying at a distance of about 100 light-years away. Astronomers using the European Space Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Canada-France-Hawaii...
Latest Star types Reference Libraries
X-Ray Astronomy -- Although the more energetic X-rays (E > 30 keV) can penetrate the air at least for distances of a few meters (they would never have been detected and medical X-ray machines would not work if this was not the case) the Earth's atmosphere is thick enough that virtually none are able to penetrate from outer space all the way to the Earth's surface. X-rays in the 0.5 - 5 keV range, where most celestial sources give off the bulk of their energy, can be stopped by a few...
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram -- In stellar astronomy, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (H-R diagram) shows the relation between the absolute magnitude and the spectral types of stars. It was invented around 1910 by Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell. There are two equivalent forms. One is the observer's form which plots the color of the star on one axis and the absolute magnitude on the other axis. The theoretician's form plots the temperature of the star on one axis and the...
X-ray Pulsar -- This dramatic artist's vision shows a city-sized neutron star centered in a disk of hot plasma drawn from its enfeebled red companion star. Ravenously accreting material from the disk, the neutron star spins faster and faster emitting powerful particle beams and pulses of X-rays as it rotates 400 times a second. Could such a bizarre and inhospitable star system really exist in our Universe? Based on data from the orbiting Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite,...
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...
![Protostar G35 Imagery From the SOFIA\](/media/gallery/sofia-stratospheric-observatory-for-infrared-astronomy/thumbs/thumbs_742079main_protostar_g35_fig_1a_1b_150_full_0.jpg "Protostar G35 Imagery From the SOFIA\")
![Protostar G35 Imagery From the SOFIA\](/media/gallery/sofia-stratospheric-observatory-for-infrared-astronomy/thumbs/thumbs_742079main_protostar_g35_fig_1a_1b_150_full.jpg "Protostar G35 Imagery From the SOFIA\")
