As of: February 4, 2024, 1:41 p.m
By: Tanja Banner
Comments
Press
Split
Artist's impression of an "old smoker": The red giant star spits out a cloud of smoke that obscures part of the star.
© Philip Lucas/University of Hertfordshire
Researchers discover a new type of star in the universe.
The “old smokers” could change our understanding of the distribution of elements.
Hatfield – The vastness of the universe is now being combed with powerful telescopes.
One might assume that all types of celestial bodies have already been identified.
But the sheer size of the universe continues to provide unexpected discoveries, even in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
A recent discovery was made by chance, as the research team was originally looking for something completely different.
In the hunt for newborn stars, researchers find a new celestial body
Philip Lucas from the University of Hertfordshire and his team were on the hunt for newborn stars.
These so-called “protostars” experience extreme outbursts, which the research team wanted to use to locate them.
Over a period of ten years, they observed almost a billion stars in the universe.
The team focused on 222 stars that showed the largest changes in brightness.
“About two-thirds of the stars could easily be classified as well-understood events of various kinds,” Lucas said in a statement.
“The others were a little more difficult, so we used ESO's Very Large Telescope to get spectra from many of them,” adds Lucas.
In science, spectra are used to analyze the light emitted by a star.
The different wavelengths of light allow experts to gather a lot of information about a star.
They came across 32 protostars whose brightness increased 40 to 300 times during an outburst.
In the center of the Milky Way: Stars emit gas “like old smokers”
But that wasn't the end of the discoveries: near the center of the Milky Way, the research team discovered 21 red stars that showed ambiguous changes in brightness during the ten-year observation period.
Lucas, the leader of the study, recalls: “We were not sure whether these 21 stars were protostars starting an eruption, screaming newborns, so to speak, or whether they were recovering from a dip in brightness caused by a disk of dust or envelope in front of the star.
A third possibility was that they were older giant stars that shed matter and gas in the late stages of their lives like old smokers.”
Analysis of seven of these stars revealed that they were a new type of red giant star.
“These older stars sit quietly for years or decades and then emit clouds of smoke in completely unexpected ways.
They look very faint and red for several years, so that sometimes we can no longer see them at all,” said Dante Minniti of Andrés Bello University in Chile, co-author of the study.
Several studies on this topic have been published in the journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
.
Do “old smokers” distribute the elements in the universe?
The newly discovered type of star, affectionately known as the “old smoker,” is located in the innermost part of the Milky Way, in the so-called “stellar core disk.”
Stars in this area are richer in heavy metals than other stars.
However, why these stars emit clouds of smoke is still unclear.
My news
Searching for life: Researchers discover super-Earth in habitable zoneread
“Something is wrong somewhere” – stars on the edge of the Milky Way are behaving strangely
The next launch of the giant rocket “Starship” is imminent – SpaceX employee gives details reading
When the next full moon will be in the sky - read the list with all the dates for 2024
Read why the total solar eclipse in April could be particularly dramatic
Mysterious Disappearance: Expensive Research Equipment Lost Under “Doomsday Glacier”read
Although many questions remain about the “ancient smoker,” this discovery could change our understanding of how different elements are distributed in the universe.
“Matter ejected from ancient stars plays a key role in the life cycle of elements and contributes to the formation of the next generation of stars and planets,” said Lucas.
Until now, it was assumed that this mainly occurs in the well-researched star type “mirasters”.
However, Lucas has a theory: "The discovery of a new type of star that sheds matter could have greater significance for the distribution of heavy elements in the core disk and metal-rich regions of other galaxies." Future studies of the new type of star will shed light.
(tab)
The editor wrote this article and then used an AI language model for optimization at her own discretion. All information has been carefully checked.
Learn more about our AI principles here
.