New observations solve longstanding mystery of tipped stars

MIT researchers and colleagues have solved a longstanding mystery about a pair of stars called DI Herculis whose peculiar rotation (a shift in their orbit that was four times slower than expected) had remained a mystery for three decades. The real explanation is simple: The stars are rotating tipped over on their sides, relative to their orbits around each other. This produces tidal effects that counteract the expected rate for the orbits to shift orientation over time (called precession), finally explaining the mysterious anomaly...

Read the whole article on

More from