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埃塔汽车:已知最危险的恒星的3D模型

(原标题: Eta Car: 3D Model of the Most Dangerous Star Known)

2022-02-09

浏览次数: 17

地球附近最危险的恒星是什么?许多人认为它是船底座埃塔,一个双星系统,大约是太阳质量的100倍,距离地球只有1万光年。船底座埃塔是一颗定时炸弹,将在几百万年后以超新星的形式爆炸,届时它可能会让地球沐浴在危险的伽马射线中。这颗恒星在19世纪40年代经历了一次臭名昭著的爆发,当时它成为南方天空中最亮的恒星,但在几十年内就消失在黑暗中。这颗恒星并没有被摧毁,而是隐藏在一个厚的、膨胀的、被称为“小矮人”的双叶结构后面,这个结构现在包围着双星。对这种喷射物的研究为这次爆炸提供了法医线索。利用美国宇航局卫星的观测结果,我们现在可以看到碎片的三维分布,从红外线到光学和紫外线,一直到只有x射线才能看到的百万度物质的最外层。

查看原文解释

What's the most dangerous star near earth? Many believe it's Eta Carinae, a binary star system about 100 times the mass of the Sun, just 10,000 light years from earth. Eta Carinae is a ticking time bomb, set to explode as a supernova in only a few million years, when it may bathe the earth in dangerous gamma rays. The star suffered a notorious outburst in the 1840s when it became the brightest star in the southern sky, only to fade to obscurity within decades. The star was not destroyed, but lies hidden behind a thick, expanding, double-lobed structure called the Homunculus which now surrounds the binary. Studies of this ejecta provide forensic clues about the explosion. Using observations from NASA satellites we can now visualize the 3D distribution of the shrapnel, all the way from the infrared, through optical and UV, to the outermost shell of million-degree material, visible only in X-rays.

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