Astronomers have used the largest telescopes available on the planet to examine and study the glassy layers of a red giant star called S Orionis.
S Orionis is a red giant star that pulsates in a size from a diameter roughly equal to the orbit of Mars to that of Jupiter in every 410 days.
Red giants are enlarged stars. When stars burn off their hydrogen reserves they begin to burn helium this causes radiation that increases the size of the star to up to 100 times its original size.
Our Sun will also have the same future and will become a red giant after some five billion years. At that time our Sun will get enormous and will consume many planets of the solar system.
During the red giant phase of a star, it pushes stellar gas and dust into space. S Orionis also sheds about the mass of Earth each year. This material which escapes the gravity of a star forms beautiful planetary nebulas. But eventually this mass is pulled back into the star and then this is the start of a new cycle.
Earlier it was not known as to what this material mainly comprises of but a research carried out by some researches discovered that the star’s dusty shell consists of corundum and moreover these researchers also discovered that the corundum was twice as large as previously thought.
This research required the expertise of the best telescopes present in the world and the task was accomplished by the Very Long Baseline Array, which is a series of 10 telescopes spread over 5,350 miles that can see radio waves and the infrared-seeing Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile.
These telescopes are so powerful that if a person uses them, he can read a newspaper in California while sitting in New York. The waves of S Orionis look like a blob of emission so the team of researchers had to record the masers from the star. Masers are naturally occurring lasers.
This star’s red giant formation has shown us the future of our Sun, which too will have the same fate after about 5 billion years.
Via: usatoday
