{"id":9864,"date":"2015-02-09T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=9864"},"modified":"2015-02-06T02:25:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T07:25:51","slug":"eso-two-white-dwarf-stars-found-that-will-one-day-merge-into-a-supernova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=9864","title":{"rendered":"ESO: Two white dwarf stars found that will one day merge into a supernova"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new study from the\u00a0European Southern Observatory (ESO)<\/a>\u00a0:<\/p>\n

Stellar Partnership Doomed to End in Catastrophe<\/strong>
\n<\/a>First pair of merging stars destined to become supernova found<\/em><\/p>\n

Astronomers using ESO facilities in combination with telescopes in the Canary Islands have identified two surprisingly massive stars at the heart of the planetary nebula Henize 2-428. As they orbit each other the two stars are expected to slowly get closer and closer, and when they merge, about 700 million years from now, they will contain enough material to ignite a vast supernova explosion. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 9 February 2015.<\/p>\n

\"eso1505a_500x312\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This artist\u2019s impression<\/a> shows the central part of the planetary nebula Henize 2-428. The core of this unique object consists of two white dwarf stars, each with a mass a little less than that of the Sun. They are expected to slowly draw closer to each other and merge in around 700 million years. This event will create a dazzling supernova of Type Ia and destroy both stars.\u00a0Credit:<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>ESO\/L. Cal\u00e7ada<\/em><\/p>\n

The team of astronomers, led by Miguel Santander-Garc\u00eda (Observatorio Astron\u00f3mico Nacional, Alcal\u00e1 de Henares, Spain;Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid<\/a> (CSIC), Madrid, Spain), has discovered a close pair of white dwarf <\/a>stars \u2014 tiny, extremely dense stellar remnants \u2014 that have a total mass of about 1.8 times that of the Sun. This is the most massive such pair yet found [1]<\/a> and when these two stars merge in the future they will create a runaway thermonuclear explosion leading to a Type Ia supernova<\/a> [2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/media.eso.org\/public\/archives\/videos\/medium_podcast\/eso1505a.m4v<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

This artist\u2019s impression video shows the central part of the planetary nebula Henize 2-428. The core of this unique object consists of two white dwarf stars, each with a mass a little less than that of the Sun. They are expected to slowly draw closer to each other and merge in around 700 million years. This event will create a dazzling supernova of Type Ia and destroy both stars.\u00a0Credit:\u00a0<\/strong>ESO\/L. Cal\u00e7ada<\/em><\/p>\n

The team who found this massive pair actually set out to try to solve a different problem. They wanted to find out how some stars produce such strangely shaped and asymmetric nebulae late in their lives. One of the objects they studied was the unusual planetary nebula<\/a> [3]<\/a> known as Henize 2-428.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we looked at this object\u2019s central star with ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope, we found not just one but a pair of stars at the heart of this strangely lopsided glowing cloud,<\/em>\u201d says coauthor Henri Boffin from ESO.<\/p>\n

This supports the theory that double central stars may explain the odd shapes of some of these nebulae, but an even more interesting result was to come.<\/p>\n

“Further observations made with telescopes in the Canary Islands allowed us to determine the orbit of the two stars and deduce both the masses of the two stars and their separation. This was when the biggest surprise was revealed<\/em>,” \u00a0reports Romano Corradi, another of the study’s authors and researcher at the Instituto de Astrof\u00edsica de Canarias<\/a> (Tenerife, IAC).<\/p>\n

They found that each of the stars has a mass slightly less than that of the Sun and that they orbit each other every four hours. They are sufficiently close to one another that, according to the Einstein\u2019s theory of general relativity, they will grow closer and closer, spiralling in due to the emission of gravitational waves, before eventually merging into a single star within the next 700 million years.<\/p>\n

The resulting star will be so massive that nothing can then prevent it from collapsing in on itself and subsequently exploding as a supernova. “Until now, the formation of supernovae Type Ia by the merging of two white dwarfs was purely theoretical,<\/em>” explains David Jones, coauthor of the article and ESO Fellow at the time the data were obtained. \u201cThe pair of stars in Henize 2-428 is the real thing!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

“It’s an extremely enigmatic system<\/em>,” concludes Santander-Garc\u00eda. “It will have important repercussions for the study of supernovae Type Ia, which are widely used to measure astronomical distances and were key to the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating due to dark energy<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

\"eso1505b_500x403\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This image of the unusual planetary nebula was obtained using ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. In the heart of this colourful nebula lies a unique object consisting of two white dwarf stars, each with a mass a little less than that of the Sun. These stars are expected to slowly draw closer to each other and merge in around 700 million years. This event will create a dazzling supernova of Type Ia and destroy both stars.\u00a0Credit:\u00a0<\/strong>ESO<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study from the\u00a0European Southern Observatory (ESO)\u00a0: Stellar Partnership Doomed to End in Catastrophe First pair of merging stars destined to become supernova found Astronomers using ESO facilities in combination with telescopes in the Canary Islands have identified two surprisingly massive stars at the heart of the planetary nebula Henize 2-428. As they orbit … Continue reading ESO: Two white dwarf stars found that will one day merge into a supernova<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34aWK-2z6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10914,"url":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=10914","url_meta":{"origin":9864,"position":0},"title":"ESO: Huge gamma-ray bursts linked to super magnetized neutron stars","author":"TopSpacer","date":"July 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A new report from\u00a0ESO\u00a0(European Southern Observatory): Biggest Explosions in the Universe Powered by Strongest Magnets Some long-duration gamma-ray bursts are driven by magnetars Observations from ESO\u2019s La Silla and Paranal Observatories in Chile have for the first time demonstrated a link between a very long-lasting burst of gamma rays and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Astronomy"","block_context":{"text":"Astronomy","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"This artist\u2019s impression shows a supernova and associated gamma-ray burst driven by a rapidly spinning neutron star with a very strong magnetic field \u2014 an exotic object known as a magnetar. 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