Two white dwarf stars circle each other in an artist's rendering of the binary system HM Cancri. [Tod Strohmayer and Dana Berry, NASA]
Posted on 03/14/2010 5:20:16 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Two extremely dense stars in an intimate dance are spinning around each other in just 5.4 minutes -- making them the fastest known stellar partners in the galaxy, astronomers have confirmed. To have such a speedy orbit, the stars must be moving at about 310 miles (500 kilometers) a second, the team calculates. The whirling duo, known as HM Cancri, also has the tightest orbit of any known "binary" star system. Both stars are white dwarfs... The stellar corpses are separated by no more than three times the width of Earth. In such tight quarters, hot gases flow between the two stars, releasing huge amounts of energy... Study leader Gijs Roelofs, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was part of the team that first detected periodic x-ray emissions from HM Cancri in 1999... To confirm the stars' dizzying tango, Roelofs and colleagues turned to the world's second largest optical telescope, at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, where they measured "wobbles" in the system's brightness... HM Cancri's record-breaking orbit couldn't get much quicker, Steeghs added, since the stars would merge if they got any closer, triggering a massive explosion known as a type Ia supernova.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
Two white dwarf stars circle each other in an artist's rendering of the binary system HM Cancri. [Tod Strohmayer and Dana Berry, NASA]
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Que the star trek fight scene music.
Pelosi & Obama?
310 mps = A little over a million miles an hour. Spins about as fast as Gibbs for Prez Zero.
Hard to imagine this setup is long-term stable (long-term in astronomical terms, of course). I wonder how long before the orbit decays and the stars merge with a supernova bang?
}:-)4
And this week’s winner of “Dancing with the Stars” are “two albino, height challenged orbiting orbs of gas.”
Now that does sound like Pelosi circling around Al Gore, or Harry Reid circling a toilet bowl looking for Cling-ons.
True. It is bound to become a Type Ia supernova. Because of its rapid rotation, it can exceed the Chandrasekhar limit for a while, but not for long.
If the distance to this pair can be established by parallax, it would be a nice calibration point for this standard candle.
:’)
Apparently they are approximately equal in mass — and maybe the children of the same original star that went kablooey. But regardless, this is a terminal relationship they’re in.
Thanks Lonesome in Massachussets!
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Very nifty; thanks for posting it.
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They’re makin’ ‘em nice now...
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