News on Stars
- Discovery of 'Ultra-cool' dwarf-star
- Oslo-experiment may explain massive star explosions
- The globular cluster M55
- Type 1a supernova have 2 sources
- Star surrounded by rare disk of quarts dust
- Aging star erupting with dust, as it prepartes for
- An old star with some new tricks
- The origin of brown dwarf substellar objects
- Black hole outburst i the M83 galaxy
- Star torn apart by black hole identified
- The last gasps of ligth from a dying star
- A star-cluster within another cluster
- Astronomers detect coolest dwarf-star
- The lives of supergiants stars
- Discovery of 2 nearby white dwarf stars
- Comet massacre around nearby star
- Black Holes grow, by eating stars
- Stars explode inside-out
- Watch a star explode
- New theory on size of black holes
- Origin of Class 1a supernovae narrowed down
- Panets figth over popular orbits
- Best-ever image of globular star-cluster
- Sister-stars drifting apart
- Rare peek at early stage of star formation
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A planet-eating star
Monday, 10 January 2011 14:14
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| Astronomy - Stars |
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Analysis of the spectrum of the star GD61 shows a lot of planetary compounds including water, which suggests that the star is consuming icy planetary bodies Spitzer observations reveal the presence of warm debris from a tidally destroyed rocky and possibly icy planetary body, orbiting the white dwarf-star GD61. Ultraviolet and optical spectroscopy of the metal-contaminated stellar photosphere reveal traces of hydrogen, oxygen, magnesium, silicon, iron, and calcium; The nominal ratios of these elements indicate an excess of oxygen relative to that expected from rock-forming metal oxides, and thus it is possible that water was accreted together with the terrestrial-like debris. Iron is found to be deficient relative to magnesium and silicon, suggesting the material may have originated as the outer layers of a differentiated parent body, as is widely accepted for the Moon Source: arxiv.org (pdf) |




