Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, along with other telescopes on the ground and in space, have discovered a new type of exotic binary star. In the system AR Scorpii a rapidly spinning white dwarf star powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star, and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio. The research will be published in the journal Nature on 28 July 2016.
The release, images and videos are available on:
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1627/
Kind regards,
The ESO Education and Public Outreach Department
27 July 2016
|
19 July 2016: Recent observations have confirmed that ALMA’s excellent sensitivity and calibration accuracy make it a top-class instrument for performing polarimetric measurements at millimetre wavelengths.
Even though ALMA (the Atacama Large ...
|
| Read more |
|
19 July 2016: ESO is host to a diverse range of talents. Find out how the ESO community works across so many fields to remain at the cutting-edge of astronomy.
Astronomy has long ...
|
| Read more |
|
|
|
|
