File:Seeing into the Heart of Mira A and its Partner.jpg

Original file(2,011 × 2,128 pixels, file size: 820 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description
English: Studying red giant stars tells astronomers about the future of the Sun— and about how previous generations of stars spread the elements needed for life across the Universe. One of the most famous red giants in the sky is called Mira A, part of the binary system Mira which lies about 400 light-years from Earth. In this image ALMA reveals Mira’s secret life. Mira A is an old star, already starting to throw out the products of its life’s work into space for recycling. Mira A’s companion, known as Mira B, orbits it at twice the distance from the Sun to Neptune. Mira A is known to have a slow wind which gently moulds the surrounding material. ALMA has now confirmed that Mira’s companion is a very different kind of star, with a very different wind. Mira B is a hot, dense white dwarf with a fierce and fast stellar wind. New observations show how the winds from the two stars have created a fascinating, beautiful and complex nebula. The remarkable heart-shaped bubble at the centre is created by Mira B’s energetic wind inside Mira A’s more relaxed outflow. The heart, which formed some time in the last 400 years or so, and the rest of the gas surrounding the pair show that they have long been building this strange and beautiful environment together. By looking at stars like Mira A and Mira B scientists hope to discover how our galaxy’s double stars differ from single stars in how they give back what they have created to the Milky Way’s stellar ecosystem. Despite their distance from one another, Mira A and its companion have had a strongeffect on one another and demonstrate how double stars can influence their environments and leave clues for scientists to decipher. Other old and dying stars also have bizarre surroundings, as astronomers have seen using both ALMA and other telescopes. But it’s not always clear whether the stars are single, like the Sun, or double, like Mira. Mira A, its mysterious partner and their heart-shaped bubble are all part of this story. The new observations of Mira A and its partner are presented in this paper.
Date
Source http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1447a/
Author ESO/S. Ramstedt (Uppsala University, Sweden) & W. Vlemmings (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)

Licensing

This media was created by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public ESO website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week, blog posts and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible."
To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available.
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

24 November 2014

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current15:04, 14 February 2024Thumbnail for version as of 15:04, 14 February 20242,011 × 2,128 (820 KB)C messierfull size
21:34, 1 December 2014Thumbnail for version as of 21:34, 1 December 20141,280 × 1,354 (113 KB)JmencisomUser created page with UploadWizard
The following pages on the English Wikipedia use this file (pages on other projects are not listed):

Global file usage

The following other wikis use this file:

Metadata