V1647 Ori - 3 Telescopes Watch The Beating Heart Of A Newborn Star
Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - 15:10
in Astronomy & Space
V1647 Ori resides 1300 light-years away in McNeil’s Nebula. It is a young Sun-like star spinning at high speed and spewing out super-hot plasma and astronomers have now been able to deduce what might be happening behind the dusty disc cloaking the star. Three telescopes, XMM-Newton, Chandra, and Suzaku, have kept their eyes on it during two multi-year outbursts. The first lasted from 2003 to 2006; the second has been under way since 2008. During these extended outbursts the star displays faster growth in mass, a surge in X-ray emission and a dramatic increase in temperature to 50 million degrees celsius. read more