Red novel created by gathering two stars

2010/12/09 Aulestiarte Lete, Izaro - Elhuyar Zientziaren Komunikazioa

• Astronomia

Astronomers do not always have the opportunity to see spiral dance between two stars. On this occasion the researchers of the OGLE project have been able to see the dance of two stars. And following the observations made between 2001 and 2008, it is believed that they have obtained information that could serve to understand the creation of red rookies.

Most of the novae are blue and are formed by exploiting the material of the white dwarfs. But astronomers have not been able to discover how red novae occur. In 2002 the best known red novel was found to date, known as V838 Monocerotis, shown in the image above. Six years later the red novel V1309 Scorpii appeared in the Milky Way, whose location allowed astronomers to study the light of hundreds of stars from Chile, within the OGLE Optical Gravitational Lensing Experimental project, to closely observe it. They unconsciously discovered the process of creating the red novel.

In fact, V1309 Scorpii originated from the fusion of a contact binary. In this type of binary systems, two stars turn one with the other so close that they touch each other. At first they were circling about 1.4 days, representing a kind of spiral. But that time was shortened until two stars merge and explode. Thus was born the red novel.

Image: Image: NASA, ESA and H.E. Bond (STScI).