Wednesday 5 October 2022 04:48 PM Astronomers spot a pair of stars with shortest orbit detected to date trends now
Astronomers have discovered a pair of stars with such a short orbit they appear to circle each other in just 51 minutes.
The system seems to be one of a rare class of binaries known as a 'cataclysmic variable,' in which a star similar to our sun orbits tightly around a white dwarf — a hot, dense core of a burned-out star.
A cataclysmic variable occurs when the two stars draw close, over billions of years, causing the white dwarf to start accreting, or eating material away from its partner star.
This process can give off enormous, variable flashes of light that, centuries ago, astronomers assumed to be a result of some unknown cataclysm.
The 'cataclysmic' system, which resides about 3,000 light years from Earth in the Hercules constellation, has the shortest orbit detected to date of its type.
It was discovered by astronomers at MIT and has been named ZTF J1813+4251.
Astronomers have discovered a pair of stars with such a short orbit they appear to circle each other in just 51 minutes. The system is known as a cataclysmic variable, which occurs when two stars draw close, over billions of years, causing the white dwarf to start accreting, or eating material away from its partner star (as depicted above)
Unlike other such systems observed in the past, experts caught this cataclysmic variable as the stars eclipsed each other multiple times, allowing the team to precisely measure the properties of each star.
They then ran simulations of what the system is likely doing today and how it should evolve over the next hundreds of millions of years.
This led the researchers to theorise that the stars are currently in transition, and that the sun-like star has been circling and 'donating' much of its hydrogen atmosphere to the voracious white dwarf.
As time goes
