L. Sidewalk / ESO
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Artist’s impression of a massive and compact three-star system.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—Earlier this year, an extraordinarily compact “one-of-a-kind” detection system was announced. Now, astronomers are studying how this unique combination of assemblages binary star and this large rotating star can form.
Tertiary star formation on a large scale, a star system consisting of a collection of binary stars. Two stars orbit each other and then one more massive star orbits a binary. This research is a collaboration of two young researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
“As far as we know, this is the first of its kind ever detected,” said Alejandro Vigna-Gomez, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and a media release.
The results of this study have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters recently. The journal is available online under the title “Mergers prompted by dynamics in compact, multiple-star systems: a stellar-reduction case for the massive triple TIC 470710327.”
“We know a lot of tertiary star systems (three star systems), but they are usually significantly less massive.massive star in triplets this is very close, this is a compact system.”
Researchers say, the orbital period of this binary system is the same as the Earth’s rotation period, which is one day. The combined mass of the two is 12 times the mass of our Sun, so it’s a rather large star.
“The tertiary star is about 16 times the mass of our Sun, so it’s much larger. The inner orbit is circular with nearly six tertiary star spins around the binary per year,” the researchers said.
Quite quickly, the researchers explain, when you consider the size, unsurprisingly, the system is very luminous. “So initially they were detected as binary stars.”
Please note, the discovery of this star is the result of the dedication of amateur astronomers. The early discoveries about the unique properties of this very special system are also special because they were made by amateur astronomers.
A community of amateur astronomers, currently browsing the public dataset from NASA’s TESS observatory (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). They found something a little unusual.
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