Hubble Chronicles Mysterious Outburst 52
An eruptive star that brightened to 600,000 times its initial intensity and briefly outshone all others in the Milky Way Galaxy has astronomers amazed and puzzled over what happened...The star, named V838 Monocerotis, has suddenly grown so big that if placed in the center of our solar system it would engulf Jupiter.
War (Score:2)
Re:War (Score:2)
Re:War (Score:2)
Re:War (Score:1)
Wrong. The sun is a fusion rector, not a fission reactor.
Re:War (Score:2)
Re:War (Score:1)
n. Clergyman who aims to unite the church.
Re:War (Score:1)
(btw. Sun is the name of ONE star. Use either "The sun" or "A star", instead of "A sun")
Re:War (Score:4, Informative)
If it's easy, it should happen all over the place already through natural processes. This does not seem to be the case (novae and supernovae are quite rare in the grand scheme of things).
Stars are very good at being self-balancing systems. As reaction rate increases, so does photon pressure, which makes the star less dense, which reduces reaction rate. This breaks down only in special cases.
Unstable giant stars, like this star appears to be, are one of those cases. Our sun may end up doing something not very different from this in a few billion years as its core runs out of fuel.
Violent explosions only occur when something overrides fusion-produced photon pressure and the star starts collapsing. This mainly happens when a star runs out of fuel, and stops again when either a new fusion stage starts, or when degeneracy pressure takes over.
Re:War (Score:1)
The only possible exception that comes to mind is the expansion of the universe, but current data indicates that we will forever expand, and never collapse. That is the only acyslic thing in the universe. (Known to me)
I call stabilities "reinforcing harmonics". It's a pattern of behavior that doesn't lead
Re:War (Score:2)
Re:Supernova? (Score:2)
"Oddly, it isn't hot and eruptive in the manner of a supernova or nova, both of which toss off outer layers in explosive fits. Instead, V838 Mon, as astronomers call it, achieved remarkable brilliance while swelling to gargantuan size and remaining cool at its surface."
wierd shit
Re:Supernova? (Score:2)
Suppose the star is moving towards the earth.
As it periodically swells and casts off a dust nebula, it could move to our side of the past nebulae (assuming that the less dense nebula moves slower than the star).
Now the nebula acts as a reflector, and there is less dust between the star and earth to hide it.
It could be that these effects magnify the apparent brightness, compared to otherwise similar stars that stay within their obscuring nebulae.
They probably have enough data to rule this out, and
Re:Supernova? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. If the star is moving at a certain velocity, then the average velocity of a particle in a cast-off shell of dust will be at the star's velocity. In other words, the star will stay centered in any spherical shell of material it gives off (yes, I know, some neutron stars get kicked out of their nebulae, but that's a far more energetic process). An interstellar wind, if present, would destroy the spherical shape of the nebula.
2. The nebula is acting a
Re:my 1st comment (Score:2)
Re:Supernova? (Score:3, Informative)
5. Their distance estimate of 6 kpc was a lower limit. If anything it was even further away and brighter.
Puberty (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Puberty (Score:1)
better picture (Score:1)
"Suddenly" actually does mean suddenly here (Score:3, Interesting)
While I was RTFA, I pretty much expected that this "sudden" event would be revealed as sudden only when measured in geologic or cosmic time; say, a few thousand millenia or so. The fact that this happened over only a few months is fascinating.
shorter timescales than that (Score:2)
Dr Fish
Starlifting? (Score:2)
New physics involved? (Score:1)
Re:New physics involved? (Score:3, Interesting)
New physics just for this star? I doubt it.
One reasonable suggestion without reaching for mysterious new physics is that it is part of a binary system, with a compact object (neutron star, white dwarf or possibly black hole) in a highly eccentric orbit around this main sequence star.
Every x number of years, the compact object skids in on its highly eccentric orbit, and slams through the upper layers of the visible sta
Re:New physics involved? (Score:2)
Not really. As far as I understand, it's actually pretty typical of the unstable time when a star either enters or leaves the red giant phase. We're seeing a "planetary nebula" being born.
Re:New physics involved? (Score:2)
"To create an outburst as sudden and as luminous as V838 Mon's, you have to do something pretty significant to the star," Kwitter said. "Right now we have no idea what. There are some interesting theories involving binary companion interactions or planet swallowing that may turn out to be relevant, but the truth is that nobody knows yet why this happened."
"This object got bigger and brighter and cooler, but we don't know why," Starrfield said today. "Right now we know th
Re:New physics involved? (Score:1)
Old News... (Score:3, Funny)
*yawn*
Todo: (Score:4, Funny)
Check.
Well, that's me done for today. Time to troll Slashdot...
Re:Todo: (Score:2)
Re:Todo: (Score:1)
Larger still image (Score:3, Informative)
-Adam
Re:Larger still image (Score:3, Informative)
The image in question can be found at this, non-changing link:
APOD for 030327 [nasa.gov].
MMMMmmmm.... APOD.
M@
Totally Dude (Score:2)
Well, it sure looks pretty damn cool.
Re:May not be that big (Score:2)
According to the article, they determined the distance by looking at the companion star in the pair, which is of a well-known type, with a well-known temperature/luminosity relation. That gave them
Too cool for science (Score:4, Funny)
The astronomer then proceded to slick back his hair and donned a pair of shades, while rythmically snapping the fingers of his free hand.
"Oh, yeah," added Bond.
Well, we can expect the Monks soon :) (Score:2)
A series of photos (Score:4, Informative)
it's not like a supernova. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:it's not like a supernova. . . (Score:2)
So either you're on the paper or you're not, depending on who you are.
Explained: (Score:2)
(yeah yeah, light travels too slowly, etc...)
Any _CLEAN_ Images of this event? (Score:2)
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Re:Any _CLEAN_ Images of this event? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Any _CLEAN_ Images of this event? (Score:2)
You are correct that the "star filter" effect is the unaltered image. Bright stars "bloom" in CCD images. This's typically why you want to try to avoid bright stars in a deep-field image: the bright stars will just overwhelm the whole image. This'd happen on film, too, but CCD produces the weird "crosshair" ef
Re:Any _CLEAN_ Images of this event? (Score:2)
a more technical article (Score:3, Informative)
Lets hope we get to see a supernova (Score:1)