A Dying Hypergiant Star Is Losing "3 0 Earths" Of Mass Every Year
One of the largest stars in the Milky Way, VY Canis Majoris, has been caught undergoing a dramatic weight loss, an event that heralds the beginning of the end for the star.
Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory( ESO) have used the Very Large Telescope to look at the area around VY Canis Majorisand discovered that every year it shedsa mass equivalent to 30 Earths. They used the SPHERE instrument, which has theprimary goal ofdirectly imaging planets, to get detailed information about the material expelled by the stars.
VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant about 30 hours the mass of the Sun. It has a radius over 1,400 hours that of the Sun, and if it were at the center of the Solar System itwould extend to the orbit of Jupiter. There is controversy on the precise sizing of this starring: Red giants are variable, evolving systems, and our understanding of them is somewhat limited.
Giant stars tend to lose a significant fraction of material in the form of dust and gas. These clouds form an envelope around an aging starring until the unavoidable supernova explosiontears the nebula apart. Scientists have been curious on how these old stars expel material so efficiently.
The explanation that has been put forward is that the starlight pushes the dust out, in the same way thatthe wind moves a sail. This mechanismis called radioactivity pressure and it is very weak. Akin towind, merely the larger grains of dust get enough of a push to escape the star’s gravity.
Massive stars live short lives, said Peter Scicluna, lead author of the papertobe published in the journalAstronomy& Astrophysics, in a statement. When they near their final days, they lose a lot of mass. In the past, we could only theorise about how this passed. But now, with the new SPHERE data, we have found big grains of dust around this hypergiant. These are big enough to be pushed away by the stars intense radioactivity pressure, which explains the stars rapid mass loss.
The dust expelled by stars like VY Canis Majoris plays a crucial role in the enrichment of the Milky Way. It will spread within the interstellar medium, becoming part of the next generation of planets and stars.
Read more: www.iflscience.com
A Dying Hypergiant Star Is Losing "3 0 Earths" Of Mass Every Year
A Dying Hypergiant Star Is Losing "3 0 Earths" Of Mass Every Year
A Dying Hypergiant Star Is Losing "3 0 Earths" Of Mass Every Year
A Dying Hypergiant Star Is Losing "3 0 Earths" Of Mass Every Year
A Dying Hypergiant Star Is Losing "3 0 Earths" Of Mass Every Year