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Astronomers may have solved the mystery behind the unusually bright star.
Anastasios Tzanidakis, a PhD student at the University of Washington, and James Davenport, a research assistant professor of astronomy, said when they received a warning from the Gaia spacecraft about a potential stellar anomaly, they said, I was looking for
Launched by the European Space Agency in 2013, the Space Observatory is on a mission to create the most accurate 3D map of the Milky Way galaxy ever. Astronomers have focused on Gaia 17bpp, a star whose luminosity has gradually increased over the course of two and a half years.
The results of Starr’s research and analysis will be available on Tuesday 241st Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society In Seattle, the star itself revealed that it hadn’t changed. Instead, the star has a strange companion responsible for what researchers estimate to be a “seven-year photobomb.”
“We believe this star is part of a very rare type of binary system, between a large, puffy old star Gaia17bpp and a smaller companion surrounded by a vast disk of dusty material. We are doing this,” Tzanidakis said in a statement.
“According to our analysis, these two stars have been orbiting each other for a very long time — 1,000 years. is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The Gaia spacecraft began observing the stars in 2014. The researchers compiled all of Gaia’s observations of the star, tracking her Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii, the NASA WISE/NEOWISE mission, and other observations of her Gaia17bpp taken by the Zwicky Transient Facility. Dating back to 2010 in California.
By comparing images of Gaia17bpp, the researchers determined that the star had dimmed by 4.5 orders of magnitude, or 45,000 times. It remained that way for seven years from 2012 to 2019.
Astronomers happened to observe the star at the end of a solar eclipse that lasted for years.
No other star located near Gaia17bpp exhibits a dimming of this magnitude. The team also searched Harvard University’s digital catalog of astrophotography plates dating back to the 1950s.
“In more than 66 years of observations, we have found no other sign of significant dimming for this star,” said Tzanidakis.
So what happened to Gaia17bpp? “Based on the currently available data, it appears to have a slow-moving companion surrounded by a large disk of material,” he said. “If that material were in the solar system, it would extend from the sun to Earth’s orbit, or even farther.”
Gaia 17bpp is unique to have such a long eclipse, but it’s not the only binary system to show dimming behavior. Astronomers are also intrigued by the constellation Epsilon Auriga, which in 27 years he experiences two eclipses by a large companion star, although the identity of the companion star remains a mystery.
The giant star Betelgeuse also fainted dramatically in late 2019, sparking speculation that it might explode into a supernova and grabbed the attention of astronomers. instead of, The star was having a dusty tantrum.
In the case of Gaia 17bpp, the dust-producing star’s companion could be a small dead star called a white dwarf, but what contributes to the debris disk around it is poorly understood.
Whatever its companion’s identity, Gaia17bpp and its mysterious cosmic partner are so distant from each other that another lunar eclipse is centuries away.
“This was a serendipitous discovery,” says Tzanidakis. “If I had been off for a few years, I would have missed it. It also shows that these types of binaries could be more common. It’s definitely weird, but it may be a lot more common than anyone realizes.”
