The European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) just released a striking set of images focused on an unusual star, HD 87643, near the constellation Carina the Keel.
The main image (to the right) centers 87643 within its backdrop of bright stars of every color; it’s the expansive kind of star field that’s just soothing to look at. But, even more impressively, ESO also obtained much closer images of 87643, zooming in around 60,000 times. The picture demonstrates that it has an unexpected companion star about 50 times as far as Earth is from the Sun. The field of view in the close-up image (lower right) is less than a pixel of the expansive image.
Astronomers are interested in 87643 because it’s a member of the rare B[e] class, and this is the best picture they’ve ever taken of one. (A star is called B[e] if it’s of spectral type B with emission lines in its spectra. Naturally.) ESO used a variety of telescopes to get the progressively closer images, starting with the Wide Field Imager at La Silla Observatory in Chile and ending with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Paranal.
As a result of such fine detail, astronomers speculate 87643 ejects matter every 15 to 50 years, shaping its surrounding nebula. The discovery of a companion star could even offer an explanation because the companion’s elliptical orbit puts it close to 87643, potentially triggering the emissions.
To me, this is what astronomy’s all about. Not just are these beautiful images, fun to look at on an office wall or computer desktop, but they teach us stuff, too. Astronomers can, with almost magical skill, probe deeper and deeper into these pictures to tell us how hot those stars are, what the surrounding clouds are made of, and (these days) if they have any orbiting planets. These images inspire and please not just our aesthetic sensibilities, but our intellectual faculties, too.
I look at pictures like this and wonder, “How can anyone not be impressed? How can people be indifferent to what’s in the sky above them?” But there are tons of people who are, somehow.
Why do you think some people don’t ‘get’ astronomy? Or am I just geeking out over nothing here?
Photos credit: ESO/F. Millour et al.