An astronomy group led by the team from the Belgian university KU Leuven, with professor Albert Zijlstra from the Space Research Laboratory of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has captured the first detailed image of a unique stellar wind surrounding a dying star, Friday (18/9/2020) .
Reporting from the publication of the science journal, the astronomy team said the scenery they found could show a fascinating shape, which solves the mystery of the death of a star like what will happen with the sun, which is predicted to die in the next 7,000 billion years.
When stars in outer space start to run out of nuclear fuel (hydrogen) as a source of combustion, they will swell and cool, turning into red giants. Then they produce a stellar wind, a stream of particles ejected by the star and causing the star to lose mass.
When the sun dies, it will create a stellar wind disaster. Winds will form planetary nebulae and produce shells of gas and dust that are ejected from the star during its evolution. This new discovery could provide clues that the nebula appears to have a certain symmetry but is almost never round.
“This latest image is of sun-like stars reaching the end of their lives. Nine out of 10 stars will form a planetary nebula at that time. Previously the origin of the shape of the planetary nebula was never clear. But our new observations have finally solved this mystery. Now we can even predict the shape of the solar nebula,” explained Albert, quoted from The Standard.
It was believed that the stellar winds were spherical, but the team discovered that they were like planetary nebulae. The team also discovered various forms of stellar winds, including disk shapes containing spirals and cones. These different patterns are caused by low-mass stars or heavy planets around dying stars.
“Just as the spoon you stir in a cup of coffee with milk can create a spiral pattern, its counterpart sucks the material toward it as it revolves around a star,” said Lee Decin of KU Leuven.
According to new calculations by the astronomy team, the weak spiral would have formed due to stellar winds from the dying old sun. Their findings have been published in the leading journal Science, which is a source of reference for both academics and the general public.
