Thursday, June 13, 2013

Mysterious star discovered by astrophysicists - Newsring

Geneva astrophysicists have discovered a new type of star whose brightness changes regularly. An extraordinary fact. Their discovery was published Wednesday, June 12 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. It is still very difficult to explain this phenomenon.

scientists observed for seven years 3000 stars in the cluster NGC 3766 with the Swiss Euler telescope, located at the La Silla Observatory of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. Within this cluster of stars, the brightness of the 36 of them intrigued. It varies indeed of the order of 0.1% for cycles ranging from 2 to 20 hours. The origin of these variations is still unknown.

These new stars have not yet been officially named. Their characteristic turn on themselves to relatively high speed, so much so that they almost graze their critical velocity, a threshold that may be unstable and to eject their particles in their system. The stars were also observed brighter and hotter than our Sun.

current models that define the life of stars do not explain the variations in brightness, the mystery remains unsolved. This could be due to “rapid rotation” advance Mowlavi friend, astrophysicist at the head of the team behind the discovery. He hopes that in any case “their discovery will encourage specialists to address the issue in the hope of understanding the origin of these mysterious changes.”


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