Astronomers managed to capture on video the movement of gas bubbling on the surface of a star other than the Sun, for the first time. The images of the star R. Doradus were made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, a partner of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The study that obtained the images was published in Nature magazine this Wednesday (11).
AR Doradus is a red giant star, about 350 times larger than our Sun, located about 180 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Swordfish. Its size and proximity make it an ideal target for observing details.
The bubbling gas movement observed occurs due to the energy produced by stars in their cores through nuclear fusion. This energy is transported to the surface through bubbles of hot gas, which soon cool and sink again, in a movement known as convection.
This same phenomenon is often observed on the Sun, but this is the first time that scientists have been able to record it in detail on another star.
“It’s convection that creates the granular structure we see on the surface of our Sun, but which is so difficult to see on other stars,” said Theo Khouri, a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and a co-author of the study. “With ALMA, we can now not only directly see convective granules — 75 times the size of our Sun! — but also measure, for the first time, how fast they’re moving.”
This content was originally published in Video captures bubbles on the surface of a star 180 light years from Earth on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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