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Strange R-Sculptoris Spiral
Saturday, October 20, 2012 18:36
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It is always nice to gather real data rather than rely on the best guess theory can produce. This is a star in its last stages of active life with most of the hydrogen long gone. It leaves quite a signature that will also be dissipated in a relatively short time.
It is a nice addition to our knowledge of a star’s life progress.
Strange Star Spiral Offers Clues to Sun’s Fate
by Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com Contributor
An intriguing spiral structure surrounding a pulsing red giant star may be offering a preview of how the sun will behave at the end of its life.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array(ALMA) in northern Chile, an international team of astronomers found the spiral structure, one never seen before, in the envelope of gas and dust around a red giant about 1,000 light-years from Earth and took a detailed three-dimensional reading of its composition.
The spiral is thought to be created from the gases being expelled by the dying red giant called R Sculptoris. The structure provides information about the velocity of the wind blowing off of R Sculptoris, revealing that the star has expelled three times as much mass as previously estimated.
