MessageToEagle.com

Unusual Star Discovered
In The Lupus Constellation

21 March, 2012

MessageToEagle.com - For more than four hundred years, astronomers have used telescopes to study the great variety of stars in our galaxy.

Millions of distant suns have been catalogued. There are dwarf stars, giant stars, dead stars, exploding stars, binary stars; by now, you might suppose that every kind of star in the Milky Way had been seen.

That's why a recent discovery is so surprising. Researchers using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii have found a star with spiral arms. The name of the star is SAO 206462. It's a young star more than four hundred light years from Earth in the constellation Lupus, the wolf. SAO 206462 attracted attention because it has a circumstellar disk--that is, a broad disk of dust and gas surrounding the star.

Researchers strongly suspected that new planets might be coalescing inside the disk, which is about twice as wide as the orbit of Pluto.

When they took a closer look at SAO 206462 they found not planets, but arms.

Astronomers have seen spiral arms before: they’re commonly found in pinwheel galaxies where hundreds of millions of stars spiral together around a common core.

Finding a clear case of spiral arms around an individual star, however, is unprecedented1.

The arms might be a sign that planets are forming within the disk.

"Detailed computer simulations have shown us that the gravitational pull of a planet inside a circumstellar disk can perturb gas and dust, creating spiral arms,” says Carol Grady, an astronomer with Eureka Scientific, Inc., who is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “Now, for the first time, we're seeing these dynamical features."

Grady revealed the image to colleagues on Oct. 19th at a meeting at Goddard entitled Signposts of Planets.

Theoretical models show that a single embedded planet may produce a spiral arm on each side of a disk. The structures around SAO 206462, however, do not form a matched pair, suggesting the presence of two unseen worlds, one for each arm.



The name of the star in the constellation Lupus is SAO 206462. It's a young star more than four hundred light years from Earth


Grady's research is part of a five-year international study of newborn stars and planets using the giant 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope. Operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Subaru scans the heavens from a perch almost 14,000 feet above sea level at the summit of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Kea.

From there it has a crystal-clear view of innumerable young stars and their planet-forming disks throughout the Milky Way.

"What we're finding is that once these systems reach ages of a few million years—that’s young for a star--their disks begin to show all kinds of interesting shapes,” says John Wisniewski, a collaborator at the University of Washington in Seattle.

"We’ve seen rings, divots, gaps--and now spiral features. Many of these structures could be caused by planets moving within the disks."



Two spiral arms emerge from the gas-rich disk around SAO 206462, a young star in the constellation Lupus. This image, acquired by the Subaru Telescope and its HiCIAO instrument, is the first to show spiral arms in a circumstellar disk. The disk itself is some 14 billion miles across, or about twice the size of Pluto's orbit in our own solar system. (Credit: NAOJ/Subaru)


However, it is not an open and shut case. The research team cautions that processes unrelated to planets might give rise to these structures. Until more evidence is collected--or until the planets themselves are detected--they can’t be certain.

Whatever the cause of the arms, their reality is undeniable and the great catalogue of stars has one more type.

See also:
Super-Earth Discovered Orbiting Several Suns

Follow MessageToEagle.com for the latest news on Facebook and Twitter !

Don't Miss Our Stories! Get Our Daily Email Newsletter

Enter your email address:


Once you have confirmed your email address, you will be subscribed to the newsletter.

Recommend this article:

Astrophysicist Resolves Paradox With Radio Millisecond Pulsars
Celestial objects known as pulsars are still full of secrets. It is takes time and many efforts to learn all their secrets. Previous studies reached the paradoxical conclusion that some millisecond pulsars are even older than the universe itself. It was time to resolve this paradox.

Mysteries Of A Dark Universe

Peculiar Nebulous Objects

Subscribe To Our Space, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Earth and Xenology News!

Grab the latest RSS feeds right to your reader, desktop or mobile phone.

Subscribe to RSS headline updates from:
Powered by FeedBurner

Go to - MAIN PAGE

Copyright @ MessageToEagle.com All rights reserved.
Go to - MAIN PAGE

 Subscribe in a reader


Other Popular Articles

Abnormal Star Discovered In The 'Forbidden Zone'
A team of astrophysicists from Germany, France and Italy have discovered in the constellation Leo is an old star. The star's existence raised at once many questions for scientists. The object is definitely not as its "contemporaries" that appeared immediately after the Big Bang event.

Proof Of How The Universe Is Changing

Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.

Bright Star In The Constellation Lyra Is Cooler Than The Human Body
The coldest class of stars have temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see.

Thermonuclear Burning In A Neutron Star Detected For The First Time!
It's a very important discovery! For the first time, an international team of scientists have detected all phases of thermonuclear burning in a neutron star, located close to the center of the galaxy in the globular cluster Terzan 5.

Extremely Distant And Exotic Quasar
It is an exotic and distant object, which has a velocity of recession of approximately 270,000 kilometers per second (!) or - 91 percent of the velocity of light itself.
The results show that this quasar, known as Q1442+101, is among exotic objects receding from the Milky Way at tremendous velocities of thousands and occasionally even hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second!

20,000-Solar-Mass Black Hole Found At The Core Of A Now-Destroyed Dwarf Galaxy
The formation of stellar-mass black holes through the collapse of massive stars is well accepted. However, it is not yet completely clear how the supermassive objects are formed.
They may form through the merger of smaller, intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) weighing hundreds to thousands of suns.

Unusual Pulsar Or Alien Signals?
The pulse timing of this object is considered unusual. What kind of phenomenon is related to this object? It is the first time this kind of phenomenon has been observed by astronomers.


The "Cloaked" Star Was Difficult To Find
An object obscured by dust, and buried in a two-star system enshrouded by dense gas, is not easy to find.
A "cloaked" star was discovered after it ate a little of its neighbor. The meal must have given the star a bit of indigestion, because it "burped" with a blast of high-energy radiation, which gave it away.


Black Gaps In The Sky Puzzle Astronomers
Very dark isolated interstellar clouds of very cold gas like black gaps have puzzled astronomers for more than a century.
Looking at the sky in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, it is clear that there are extremely dark, opaque knots of gas and dust especially in the region toward the center of our Milky Way.


Invader From Another Galaxy
This alien intruder from another galaxy is in many ways different from other exoplanets observed by astronomers.
Located about 2000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Fornax (the Furnace), the Jupiter-like planet orbits a dying star of extragalactic origin and risks to be engulfed by it.


Intimate Connection Between Black Holes And New-Born Stars
Astronomers have known for some time that black holes and supermassive black holes accretion and star formation appear intimately connected.
However, it does not mean that powerful gravitational forces of the black holes disrupt surrounding material in their vicinity.


Power To See Most Distant Objects In The Universe
The 3C294, is one of the most distant galaxies recorded by Chandra, the most sophisticated X-ray observatory ever built. The cluster 3C294 is even 40 percent farther (!) than the next most distant x-ray galaxy cluster. Chandra focus on X-rays from high-energy regions of the Universe and see the invisible. It is so sensitive that it can capture images of particles as they disappear into a black hole deep in outer space.

W3Counter