Scientists discover 'Vampire' star gorging on victim (Representational Image)
Astronomers have discovered a vampire star which is in the midst of a feeding frenzy, 3,000 light-years away from the earth. In the recent discovery it was also found that this white dwarf star near the constellation of Scorpius is gorging on much smaller brown dwarf companion. Our sun would also turn into a white dwarf in billions of years.
The white dwarfs are the one who has burned up all the hydrogen whereas the brown dwarf, which is 10 times less massive, is too large to be called a planet and too small to be recognized as a star.
According to Lead researcher Ryan Ridden-Harper, who conducted the study as part of his Ph.D. at The Australian National University (ANU), the program found a dwarf nova, which comprises a white dwarf -- the dense remains of a star, something our Sun will be in billions of years -- gorging on a brown dwarf companion.
"The rare event we found was a super-outburst from the dwarf nova, which can be thought of like a vampire star system," added Ridden-Harper.
The astronomers discovered it with the help of an automated program that is sifting through archived data from the decommissioned Kepler Space Telescope.
"The incredible data from Kepler reveals a 30-day period during which the dwarf nova rapidly became 1,600 times brighter before dimming quickly and gradually returning to its normal brightness," Ridden continued.
The new program acts as a detective to find clues of very fast, mysterious explosions in the universe.
The spike in brightness was caused by material stripped from the brown dwarf that is being coiled around the white dwarf in a disk. That disk reached up to 11,700 degrees Celsius at the peak of the super-outburst.
The program aims to find rare astronomical events that evolve rapidly, over hours or days - such as gamma-ray bursts from core-collapse supernovae, colliding neutron stars or potentially those not seen before through optical telescopes.
"The discovery of this dwarf nova was unexpected since it wasn't what we were searching for, but it provided excellent data and new insights into these vampire star systems," said Mr. Ridden-Harper, who made the discovery in collaboration with colleagues at ANU and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and the University of Notre Dame in the United States.
"The next steps for this project are to comb through all Kepler data and extend it to data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which is known as TESS," Mr. Ridden-Harper said.
He also shared, "This will give us the best understanding of the most rapid explosions in the universe. Along the way, we might discover some rare events that no other telescope could find."
Dr. Brad Tucker, who supervised Mr. Ridden-Harper's work, said the program has extended the use of the Kepler Space Telescope's data to support innovative science.
"We've used it to see stars as they explode, the secret lives of black holes and now things previously missed -- this vampire star that had been lurking in the darkness of space," said Dr. Tucker from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
(With inputs from ANI)
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