Podcaster: Richard Drumm
Title: UNAWE Space Scoop – A Rare Cosmic Magic Jug
Organization: 365 Days Of Astronomy
Link : http://365daysofastronomy.org/ ; https://spacescoop.org/en/scoops/2311/fast-and-furious-starring-dual-quasars/
Description: Space scoop, news for children.
I present to you the “Cosmic Jug”!
Astronomers recently captured this rare structure using NSF NOIRLab’s Gemini South telescope. The image is that of a reflection nebula, nicknamed the Toby Jug Nebula, resembling the shape of an old style English pottery jug.
A Toby Jug? Whaaaaat? No, really. Go to Wikipedia and type it in. It’s fascinating!
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 the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. 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 Rare Cosmic Magic Jug
What happens when an ancient dying red giant star clashes with a shredded companion star? Go to Google Images and enter IC 2220, the official name of the, uh, star of today’s show. I present to you the “Cosmic Jug”!
Astronomers recently captured this rare structure using NSF NOIRLab’s Gemini South telescope. The image is that of a reflection nebula, nicknamed the Toby Jug Nebula, resembling the shape of an old style English pottery jug. A Toby Jug? Whaaaaat? No, really. Go to Wikipedia and type it in. It’s fascinating!
The glowing nebula is located roughly 1,200 light-years away from Earth, in the direction of the southern constellation Carina, the keel. The nebula has a double-lobed or bipolar cloud of gas and dust and is lit up by a red-giant star, HR3126, at its center. Astronomers think that the structure is unique to aging red giant stars like 3126 that will soon end and transform into a planetary nebula.
As the stellar giant 3126 began to grow bigger and bigger, its atmosphere began to expand, causing the star to shed its outer layers. The intense heat from the core literally pushes the outer parts of the star out of the star’s gravity well, and it drifts away from the star. The material that got thrown away flowed into the nearby area forming the double lobed structure. The structure also began reflecting light from the central star. By carefully studying the nebula in infrared light, researchers found the exact chemical compound that was reflecting the light from HR3126. Silicon dioxide or silica! Astronomers find it extremely challenging to study the final stages of red giants because they exist for only a brief period of time. Not only that, researchers suggest that it’s very rare that any cosmic structures form around the star in such a short period of time.
The discovery is important because it helps us study the evolution and end stages of low to intermediate mass stars in detail. Very high mass stars go BOOM in supernovas, but this is a smaller star than that. The finding also shows the cosmic structures that form during this process. In theory, researchers think that this structure is a result of the clash between the red giant and a companion binary star. But the astronomers have yet to find that companion.
However, they saw a tiny disk of material around 3126 suggesting that the cozy friend might have been shredded into an accretion disk. And this process created the surrounding nebula seen by the Gemini South telescope.
Hey, here’s a cool fact!
HR3126 is five times more massive than our Sun, allowing the star to burn through hydrogen quicker and become a red giant faster than our Sun will. And 3126 is very young compared to our Sun, only 50 million years old. Our Sun is 4.6 billion years old. So if the very last dinosaurs had a telescope, they couldn’t have seen 3126. It hadn’t been born yet! Thank you for listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast!
Thank you for listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast!
365 Days of Astronomy
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