esocid writes “Astronomers have spied a faraway star system that’s so unusual, it was one of a kind — until its discovery helped them pinpoint a second one that was much closer to home. In a paper published in a current issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ohio Say University astronomers and their colleagues suggest that these star systems are the progenitors of a rare type of supernova. In research funded by the National Science Foundation, they found a star system that is unusual, because it’s what the astronomers have called a ‘yellow supergiant eclipsing binary’ — it contains two very bright, large yellow stars that are very closely orbiting each other. In fact, the stars are so close together that a massive amount of stellar material is shared between them, so that the shape of the system resembles a peanut.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Entries (RSS)