WM Keck Observatory
Like musical instruments, stars resonate with natural frequencies that astronomers can “listen” with the right tools.
The astronomers tuned to music of one star next and reveal a surprising discovery, summarizes the observatory, essential in this revelation.
A team of astronomers got listen to “music” and explore the interior of a type of star considered so far Too silent To be investigated, reveals one released in The Astrophysical Journal.
From the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii (United States), scientists used a state -of -the -art device, Keck Planet Finder (KPF), To detect wavy oscillations in the star HD 219134.
Like musical instruments, stars resonate with natural frequencies that astronomers can “listen” with the right tools, a field of investigation designated of asterosismology, which studies the internal structure of stars by reading their frequencies.
“The vibrations of a star are like its unique song”, Said Yaguang Li, lead author and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Havai (IFA), in a statement.
“Upon hearing these oscillations, we can accurately determine the mass, size and age of a star ”.
So far, the “Star Songs” were recorded mainly from warmer stars than the sun, using NASA spatial telescopes, such as Kepler and Tess.
But the oscillations of HD 219134-a colder and more orange star, just 21 light years away-are too subtle to be detected by the variations of brightness analyzed with those telescopes.
During Four consecutive nightsthe team used the KPF to collect more than 2,000 ultra -prepicion measurements From the speed of the star, capturing its vibrations in action.
In the “first asterosism deduction of age and the radius of a cold star using the KPF”, scientists determined the age of HD 219134 in 10.2 billion years, More than double the age of the sunMeasurement that “has important implications for understanding star aging.”
They also found that this star seems smaller of what was indicated by any kind of measurements other than asterosismic.
According to the study, HD 219134 houses a family of at least five planets, including two rocky worlds that will have compositions similar to that of the Earth, with the most accurate measurement of the volume of the star allowed to refine the sizes and densities of these planets.
