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NGC 3603-A1
NGC 3603-A1 (HD 97950A1) is a double-eclipsing binary star system located at the centre of the HD 97950 cluster in the NGC 3603 star-forming region, about 25,000 light years from Earth. Both stars are of spectral type WN6h and among the most luminous and most massive known. HD 97950 was catalogued as a star, but was known to be a dense cluster or close multiple star. In 1926, the six brightest members were given letters from A to F, although several of them have since been resolved into more than one star. Star A was first resolved into three components using speckle interferometry, although they can now be directly imaged using space-based or adaptive optics. Component A1 was finally determined to be a spectroscopic binary. The two component stars of NGC 3603-A1 circle each other every 3.77 days, and show brightness variations of about 0.3 magnitudes due to eclipses. The stars orbit very close to each other, separated by barely their own diameters and at or near ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HII Region
An H II region or HII region is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized. It is typically in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place, with a size ranging from one to hundreds of light years, and density from a few to about a million particles per cubic centimetre. The Orion Nebula, now known to be an H II region, was observed in 1610 by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc by telescope, the first such object discovered. The regions may be of any shape because the distribution of the stars and gas inside them is irregular. Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, The short-lived blue stars created in these regions emit copious amounts of ultraviolet light that ionize the surrounding gas. H II regions—sometimes several hundred light-years across—are often associated with giant molecular clouds. They often appear clumpy and filamentary, sometimes showing intricate shapes such as the Horsehead Nebula. H II regio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hipparcos Objects
''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions of celestial objects on the sky. This permitted the first high-precision measurements of the intrinsic brightnesses (compared to the less precise apparent brightness), proper motions, and parallaxes of stars, enabling better calculations of their distance and tangential velocity. When combined with radial velocity measurements from spectroscopy, astrophysicists were able to finally measure all six quantities needed to determine the motion of stars. The resulting ''Hipparcos Catalogue'', a high-precision catalogue of more than 118,200 stars, was published in 1997. The lower-precision ''Tycho Catalogue'' of more than a million stars was published at the same time, while the enhanced Tycho-2 Catalogue of 2.5 million stars was published in 2000. ''Hipparcos'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Draper Catalogue Objects
Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) *Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, Henry of Burgundy, Count of Portugal (father of Portugal's first king) ** Prince Henry the Navigator, Infante of Portugal ** Infante Henrique, Duke of Coimbra (born 1949), the sixth in line to Portuguese throne * King of Germany ** Henry the Fowler (876–936), first king of Germany * King of Scots (in name, at least) ** Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545/6–1567), consort of Mary, queen of Scots ** Henry Benedict Stuart, the 'Cardinal Duke of York', brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was hailed by Jacobites as Henry IX * Four kings of Castile: **Henry I of Castile **Henry II of Castile **Henry III of Castile **Henry IV of Castile * Five kings of France, spelt ''Henri'' in Modern French since the Renaissance to italianize the name and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolf–Rayet Stars , which surrounds a Wolf–Rayet star
{{disambiguation ...
Wolf–Rayet (WR) can mean: * Wolf–Rayet star, a type of evolved, massive star * Wolf–Rayet galaxy, which contains large numbers of Wolf–Rayet stars * Wolf–Rayet nebula A Wolf–Rayet nebula is a nebula which surrounds a Wolf–Rayet star. WR nebulae have been classified in various ways. One of the earliest was by the nature and origin of the nebula: * HII regions * ejecta-type nebulae * wind-blown bubbles Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photosphere
The photosphere is a star's outer shell from which light is radiated. The term itself is derived from Ancient Greek roots, φῶς, φωτός/''phos, photos'' meaning "light" and σφαῖρα/''sphaira'' meaning "sphere", in reference to it being a spherical surface that is perceived to emit light. It extends into a star's surface until the plasma becomes opaque, equivalent to an optical depth of approximately , or equivalently, a depth from which 50% of light will escape without being scattered. A photosphere is the deepest region of a luminous object, usually a star, that is transparent to photons of certain wavelengths. Temperature The surface of a star is defined to have a temperature given by the effective temperature in the Stefan–Boltzmann law. Stars, except neutron stars, have no solid or liquid surface. Therefore, the photosphere is typically used to describe the Sun's or another star's visual surface. Composition of the Sun The Sun is composed primarily of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stellar Wind
A stellar wind is a flow of gas ejected from the upper atmosphere of a star. It is distinguished from the bipolar outflows characteristic of young stars by being less collimated, although stellar winds are not generally spherically symmetric. Different types of stars have different types of stellar winds. Post-main-sequence stars nearing the ends of their lives often eject large quantities of mass in massive ( \scriptstyle \dot > 10^ solar masses per year), slow (v = 10 km/s) winds. These include red giants and supergiants, and asymptotic giant branch stars. These winds are understood to be driven by radiation pressure on dust condensing in the upper atmosphere of the stars. Young T Tauri stars often have very powerful stellar winds. Massive stars of types O and B have stellar winds with lower mass loss rates (\scriptstyle \dot 1–2000 km/s). Such winds are driven by radiation pressure on the resonance absorption lines of heavy elements such as carbon and nitr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CNO Cycle
The CNO cycle (for carbon–nitrogen–oxygen; sometimes called Bethe–Weizsäcker cycle after Hans Albrecht Bethe and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) is one of the two known sets of fusion reactions by which stars convert hydrogen to helium, the other being the proton–proton chain reaction (p–p cycle), which is more efficient at the Sun's core temperature. The CNO cycle is hypothesized to be dominant in stars that are more than 1.3 times as massive as the Sun. Unlike the proton-proton reaction, which consumes all its constituents, the CNO cycle is a catalytic cycle. In the CNO cycle, four protons fuse, using carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotopes as catalysts, each of which is consumed at one step of the CNO cycle, but re-generated in a later step. The end product is one alpha particle (a stable helium nucleus), two positrons, and two electron neutrinos. There are various alternative paths and catalysts involved in the CNO cycles, all these cycles have the same ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roche Lobe
In astronomy, the Roche lobe is the region around a star in a binary system within which orbiting material is gravitationally bound to that star. It is an approximately teardrop-shaped region bounded by a critical gravitational equipotential, with the apex of the teardrop pointing towards the other star (the apex is at the Lagrangian point of the system). The Roche lobe is different from the Roche sphere, which approximates the gravitational sphere of influence of one astronomical body in the face of perturbations from a more massive body around which it orbits. It is also different from the Roche limit, which is the distance at which an object held together only by gravity begins to break up due to tidal forces. The Roche lobe, Roche limit, and Roche sphere are named after the French astronomer Édouard Roche. Definition In a binary system with a circular orbit, it is often useful to describe the system in a coordinate system that rotates along with the objects. In this no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speckle Interferometry
Speckle imaging describes a range of high-resolution astronomical imaging techniques based on the analysis of large numbers of short exposures that freeze the variation of atmospheric turbulence. They can be divided into the shift-and-add ("''image stacking''") method and the speckle interferometry methods. These techniques can dramatically increase the resolution of ground-based telescopes, but are limited to bright targets. Explanation The principle of all the techniques is to take very short exposure images of astronomical targets, and then process those so as to remove the effects of astronomical seeing. Use of these techniques led to a number of discoveries, including thousands of binary stars that would otherwise appear as a single star to a visual observer working with a similar-sized telescope, and the first images of sunspot-like phenomena on other stars. Many of the techniques remain in wide use today, notably when imaging relatively bright targets. The resolution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Most Massive Stars
This is a list of the most massive stars that have been discovered, in solar masses (). Uncertainties and caveats Most of the masses listed below are contested and, being the subject of current research, remain under review and subject to constant revision of their masses and other characteristics. Indeed, many of the masses listed in the table below are inferred from theory, using difficult measurements of the stars' temperatures and absolute brightnesses. All the masses listed below are uncertain: Both the theory and the measurements are pushing the limits of current knowledge and technology. Both theories and measurements could be incorrect. For example, VV Cephei could be between , or , depending on which property of the star is examined. Complications with distance and obscuring clouds Since massive stars are rare, astronomers must look very far from Earth to find them. All the listed stars are many thousands of light years away, which makes measurements difficult. In addi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
