Unusual Stars Create Spirals In Deep Space

Sixteen years ago, scientists first observed what appeared to be a quintet of very prominent red stars in a large cluster 26,000 light years away near Galactic Center. Dubbed The Quintuplet, these stars travel in a large cluster and are cocooned in layers of dust – which until now, has puzzled astronomers. Each of these stars have now been revealed to be a huge double star that trails dust into picturesque pinwheel shapes.

The giveaway is the unusual uniformity of the light these double stars emit. Whereas normal starlight varies with different wavelengths, the Quintuplets gave off a uniform, featureless light across a wide waveband. Detailed observations made by one of the 10 meter Keck telescopes in Hawaii revealed that each of the Quints is actually two stars. What astronomers have been seeing is the dust around these double star systems. This dust made each pair appear as a single star.

Two of the infrared images showed elegant spiral-shaped “dust lanes” created by the paths of the stars. These spirals, it is thought, are created by “Wolf-Rayet” stars that create violent stellar winds of up to 2000 km per second (about 48,000 miles per hour!) A Wolf-Rayet star is one that lives fast and dies young, born with a mass at least twenty-five times that of our own Sun. The wind generated by this star slams into that of its partner. Where the two winds collide, the spiral effect is created.

“You have an effect like a garden hose being twirled around,” says Donald Figer from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. “ItÂ’s the last stage before they go supernova, probably within a few hundred thousand years.“

Via New Scientist

Sixteen years ago, scientists first observed what appeared to be a quintet of very prominent red stars in a large cluster 26,000 light years away near Galactic Center. Dubbed The Quintuplet, these stars travel in a large cluster and are cocooned in layers of dust – which until now, has puzzled astronomers. Each of these stars have now been revealed to be a huge double star that trails dust into picturesque pinwheel shapes.

The giveaway is the unusual uniformity of the light these double stars emit. Whereas normal starlight varies with different wavelengths, the Quintuplets gave off a uniform, featureless light across a wide waveband. Detailed observations made by one of the 10 meter Keck telescopes in Hawaii revealed that each of the Quints is actually two stars. What astronomers have been seeing is the dust around these double star systems. This dust made each pair appear as a single star.

Two of the infrared images showed elegant spiral-shaped “dust lanes” created by the paths of the stars. These spirals, it is thought, are created by “Wolf-Rayet” stars that create violent stellar winds of up to 2000 km per second (about 48,000 miles per hour!) A Wolf-Rayet star is one that lives fast and dies young, born with a mass at least twenty-five times that of our own Sun. The wind generated by this star slams into that of its partner. Where the two winds collide, the spiral effect is created.

“You have an effect like a garden hose being twirled around,” says Donald Figer from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. “ItÂ’s the last stage before they go supernova, probably within a few hundred thousand years.“

Via New Scientist