Dying star and hot gas emissions around in emerging from somewhere else: A cosmic puzzle
Q. Through NASA’s Hubble space telescope data, scientists including one of Indian origin have detected blobs of gas from around which dying star?- Published on 10 Oct 16a. V Hydrae
b. C Hydrae
c. D Hydrae
d. None of the above
ANSWER: V Hydrae
Through NASA’s Hubble space telescope data, scientists including those of Indian-origin have detected super-hot blobs of gas, each twice as massive as Mars, being ejected bear the dying star
- Plasma balls are zooming at such a massive speed that it only takes 30 minutes for them to travel to the Earth from the moon
- Stellar cannon fire has continued once every 8.5 years for the past 4 centuries
- This object has a high-speed outflow from the previous data, yet this is the first time this is being seen in action
- Fireballs present a mystery to astronomers, as the ejected material could not have been shot out by the host star, referred to as V Hydrae
- The star is a bloated red giant, residing 1,200 light years away and has shed at least half of its mass into space at the time of death
- Red giants are dying stars in the final stage of life that are exhausting their nuclear fuel that makes them shine
- They have expanded in size and are shedding outer layers into space
- Best explanation suggests plasma balls were launched by an unseen companion star
- Scientists have theorised that the companion would have been in elliptical orbit carrying it close to the red giant’s puffed up atmosphere every 8.5 years
- As the companion enters the bloated star’s outer atmosphere, it swallows material which then settles into a disk around a companion and serves as a launching pad for blobs of plasma travelling at half a million mph
- The star system could be an archetype explain the dazzling variety of glowing shapes uncovered by Hubble that are seen around dying stars called planetary nebulae
- A planetary nebulae is an expanding shell of glowing gas expelled by a star late in its life.
- These gaseous blobs produced during the late phase of the star’s life help make the structures seen in the planetary nebulae
- STIS or Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph was used to study V Hydrae and the surrounding region over a period of 11 years
- Spectroscopy decodes light from an object, revealing information regarding its velocity, temperature, location and motion.
