Podcaster: Richard Drumm
Title: Space Scoop: A Stellar Family Photograph
Organization:365 Days Of Astronomy
Link : astrosphere.org ; http://unawe.org/kids/unawe1626/
Description: Space scoop, news for children
Bio: Richard Drumm is President of the Charlottesville Astronomical Society and President of 3D – Drumm Digital Design, a video production company with clients such as Kodak, Xerox and GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. He was an observer with the UVa Parallax Program at McCormick Observatory in 1981 & 1982. He has found that his greatest passion in life is public outreach astronomy and he pursues it at every opportunity.
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Transcript:
This is 365 Days of Astronomy. Today we bring you a new episode in our Space Scoop series. This show is produced in collaboration with Universe Awareness, a program that strives to inspire every child with our wonderful cosmos.
Today’s story is: A Stellar Family Photograph
Imagine that an advanced alien race discovers our little blue planet and decides to send a probe to study us for just a single day. Like us studying our outer planets, they do a fly-by mission past Earth.
Imagine then, them using a giant scanning device that can take images of the entire Earth, they collect huge amounts of data during their short visit. Many of the pictures are of us humans going about our daily lives.
What could this snapshot possibly tell them about us? One day is far too short to observe a single person be born, grow old and die. But the aliens would see children, adults and old people. All of these moments could be pieced together to understand the lifespan of a human.
Astronomers understand that a lot can be gained by a snapshot — they do the exact same thing with stars.
Compared to stars, humans have only been around for the blink of an eye. Stars live for millions or billions of years. So, we can’t possibly witness the birth, life and death of the same star. However, we can observe stars at different stages of life.
Astronomers used the SMA radio telescope array and the Chandra X-ray space telescope to take a multispectral composite image of an object called Cygnus X-3. So the image they got is both radio and X-ray combined.
Cygnus X-3 is an X-ray binary, where a either black hole or a neutron star “Compact object” pulls gas away from a companion star. The material is heated to very high temperatures, so high that it emits not just light but X-rays too.
While it might not look like anything special, the picture they took includes every possible stage of a star’s life: beginning, middle and end. It’s like a family photograph!
The bright point of light at the centre of the picture they took is Cygnus X-3. That single point of light is the two stars, the old grand daddy compact object and a middle aged, hot, massive star that the compact object is feeding upon.
To one side in that picture is a thing the astronomers called X-3’s “Little friend.” At first the astronomers had no idea what it was, so more study and telescope time was called for.
As it turns out, the Little Friend is a cloud of cosmic gas and dust where new stars are forming. Astronomers were quite baffled by this picture, because this type of star-making cloud has never been seen giving off X-rays before.
But they determined that the cloud is simply acting as a mirror, reflecting the X-rays shining from Cygnus X-3.
Hey, Here’s A Cool Fact:
Wait. That’s the grandpa & daddy stars, but where’s the baby in the family picture?
Well, the radio telescope array saw CO, carbon monoxide, in the Little Friend. The spectral lines of the CO showed that there was a jet of gas, part of which was coming toward us and part of which was jetting away from us.
This so-called bipolar molecular outflow is proof that there is active star formation happening in the Little Friend and that it is what’s called a Bok globule, named after the great Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok. These dense clouds of gas & dust are star formation regions that often produce double stars.
So the Little Friend is a new mother giving birth to baby stars! Probably twins!
Awwwww!
Thank you for listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Astrosphere New Media. Audio post-production by Richard Drumm. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. This year we will celebrate more discoveries and stories from the universe. Join us and share your story. Until tomorrow! Goodbye!