jeudi 29 décembre 2011

Fastest Rotating Star Found in Neighboring Galaxy









Astronomical Observatories discoveries.

Dec. 29, 2011


This artist's concept pictures the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 100 times faster than our sun does.

Centrifugal forces from this dizzying spin rate have flattened the star into an oblate shape and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet. The star may have "spun up" by accreting material from a binary companion star.

The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova. The whirling star lies 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.


Image above: VFTS 102, the fastest-rotating massive star. This view shows part of the stellar nursery called the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small neighbor of the Milky Way.

The brilliant star VFTS 102 is in the center. This view includes both visible-light and infrared images from the Wide Field Imager at the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at La Silla, Chile and the 4.1-meter infrared VISTA telescope at Paranal, Chile. VFTS 102 is the most rapidly rotating massive star ever found.

Images, Text, Credits: NASA / ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) / ESO / M.-R. Cioni / VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch