Hot Stars So Close Yet So Far Away

January 17, 2012 at 12:32 pm | Posted in Astronomy, Regular Feature, Science News | Leave a comment

Close but far as in the next galaxy over.  The satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds visible in the southern skies, have a couple of excitable beauties in their midst.  AB7, a binary star, has very strong stellar winds that continuously eject energy particles from 10 to 1,000 times more intensely than our own star, the sun.  You definitely don’t want to get too close to this pair because AB7 is hotter than you can handle; as in surface temperatures that exceed 120,000 degrees.

The green filament visible in the upper left just outside the clouds are the remains of a super nova explosion.

Posted by Synlah for Roqoo Depot