So perhaps it's no surprise that the small, brief dips in brightness were missed until now.Įven the space-based Kepler mission didn't catch the star's variations. What's more, the eclipses are only six hours long. The variations are small in part because the stars don't fully eclipse each other. However, the primary eclipse causes a change in brightness of only about 0.1 magnitude the secondary eclipse is marked by an even smaller dip, 0.02 magnitude. So even though Thuban isn't exactly the brightest star in the sky - at magnitude 3.7 it's the eighth-brightest star in Draco - the discovery at first took astronomers by surprise. Thuban's eclipses occur twice every 51.4 days. When two stars in a binary system eclipse each other, their overall brightness as seen from Earth fades and increases again in a cyclic way. “The first question that comes to mind is ‘how did we miss this?’” says Angela Kochoska (Villanova University). Turns out, the two stars eclipse each other as seen from Earth.
At the recent American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, astronomers announced that TESS had uncovered something rather surprising about the well-known double star in Draco named Thuban (also called Alpha Draconis). But as it's examining stars for the subtle dips that mark a planet's passage in front of its star, it can catch lots of other stellar goings-on, too. NASA's TESS mission has a primary goal of looking for exoplanets. Now data from NASA's TESS show its two stars undergo mutual eclipses. Its keen eye allows astronomers to explore the furthest reaches of space and uncover the hidden wonders that reside there.The star Thuban, also known as Alpha Draconis, has long been known to be a binary system. The Hubble Space Telescope is renowned for its ability to capture breathtaking images of celestial objects in the cosmos. Hello out there, M85!At 50 million light-years away, this galaxy contains about 400 billion stars! Most of these stars are very old, but the central region is home to a batch of comparatively younger stars – just a few billion years old: /tgEYa2RP5J The above image is a composite of infrared, visible, and ultraviolet observations from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. While most galaxies are believed to possess a supermassive black hole at their centers, the presence of such a black hole in Messier 85 remains uncertain. The mysteries surrounding Messier 85 do not end there. These stars, estimated to be just a few billion years old, likely formed in a late burst of star formation triggered by the galaxy's merger with another galactic entity over four billion years ago. Meanwhile, the smaller elliptical galaxy known as MCG 3-32-38 can be found at the center bottom, engaging in its own gravitational interplay with Messier 85.Ĭomprising an astonishing 400 billion stars, most of which are considerably old, Messier 85 surprises researchers with a central region that hosts a population of relatively young stars. To the upper left, the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 4394 gracefully interacts with Messier 85, adding an element of elegance and complexity to the celestial display. It also appears to be interacting with its neighbouring celestial bodies. What makes Messier 85 so captivating is that its properties lie somewhere between those of a lenticular and an elliptical galaxy. This latest image beamed back by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Messier 85, an intriguing galaxy that lies around 50 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair). Devdiscourse News Desk | California | Updated: 03-06-2023 09:16 IST | Created: 03-06-2023 09:16 IST Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R.
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