ANTARES, ASTRONOMERS CAPTURE THE BEST EVER IMAGE OF A STAR OTHER THAN THE SUN

Astronomers have managed to capture some of the best ever and most detailed photographs of Antares surface and atmosphere and they have shared the photos online.  

ANTARES IS CALLED THE RED SUPERGIANT THANKS TO ITS ROSY GLOW

Antares is the red supergiant and it is at the very heart of the Scorpius constellation. It is named the red supergiant due to the fact that it has a rosy hue which is discernible by the naked eye. The new photos have been taken in Chile with the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory and they have revealed a detailed look at the atmosphere and surface of the star that is well beyond the solar system.  

Antares is located around 550 light years from Earth, and the mass of the star is about 15 times the mass of the sun. However, it is expanding out and is in in the last part of its life and will become a supernova and due to this, it is losing material. Astronomers have said that if Antares were sitting in the middle of our solar system, the outer layers would be able to reach Mars. Up until now the exact process at which the giant stars lose their mass from the upper atmosphere hasn’t really been known.

LATEST PHOTOS MAP THE SURFACE OF ANTARES THANKS TO THE VLTI

The latest photos from the astronomers hope to answer this question as they map the motions of the material surface in very intricate details thanks to the VLTI, the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. This is an instrument that is able to combine the light from as many as four telescopes so that it can create a virtual telescope which has a resolution that is the same of a single mirror that is about 200 meters wide.  

Keiichi Ohnaka from the Universidad Catolica del Norte in Chile said how stars such as the Antare lose their mass so fast in the final part of their evolution is something that has been an issue for more than half a century. The author of the paper went on to say that the VLTI is the only place capable of measuring correctly the gas motions in the extended Antares atmosphere and this is something that is critical in clarifying the problem. It is said that the next challenge researchers and astronomers have is to identify just what drives the turbulent motions.  

From the observations made researchers have found some unexpected turbulence in the outer atmosphere of the star and these have been big clumps of receding and up-welling gas. They are movements that cannot be fully explained by the convection currents, where the gas flow transfers any heat from the core and to the outer limits of the star, which points to a new and at the moment, unknown process. 

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