Massive binary stellar system on the Milky Way is too young to be so massive

The two stars are among the most massive that we ever measure directly on our Milky Way, and help us understand how massive stars live, evolve and eventually die

A team of astronomers analyzed as accurately as possible one of the most massive stars of our galaxy, known as NGC 3603-A1.

Using Unbuded File Data from the Hubble Space Telescope and new observations, made accurately, the team has measured the properties of this extraordinary system with a level never before reached.

O was published in the magazine The Astrophysical Journal.

NGC 3603-A1 is located in a stunning star swarming known as HD 97950, NO NGC 3603 Nebula Centerabout 25,000 light years from Earth. NGC 3603 is one of the most active star formation regions of our galaxy and houses dozens of extremely hot and bright stars.

The two giant stars that constitute the NGC 3603-A1 system orbit each other every 3.8 days. This means that in the time the earth leads to orbit the sun once, the two giant stars that make up the NGC 3603-A1 system They will have orbited to each other almost a hundred times.

One of the stars has about 93 times the mass of our sunand the other has about 70 solar pasta.

These stars They are so bright and powerful that free winds and intense radiation, making it look like a special type of star called Wolf-Rayet.

A Wolf-Rayet star is a star extremely hot and massive who approaches the end of his life, freeing powerful winds that remove his outer layers and make her shine with unusual intensity.

However, unlike the true wolf-rayet stars, the stars of NGC 3603-A1 They are still young.

“This is a rare and exciting discovery“, it says Phil Masseyteam leader of the Lowell Observatory. “These stars are among the most massive we ever measure directly on our Milky Way, and help us understand how massive stars live, evolve and eventually die.”

Although astronomers had long suspected that NGC3603-A1 was a very massive binary star system, this is the first time these heavy weights were measured directly.

Sarah Bodanskyat the time student at Carleton College, Minnesota, USA, worked remotely at the Lowell Observatory during the 2020 “pandemic summer” and identified the main way to follow from older Hubble data.

“For the most massive stars, astronomers usually have to be based on models that are not very well defined for ‘Weighing’ The Star“Bodansky explains,” but this study focused on a special type of binary system where we can get a more fundamental measurement of its mass. “

“Sarah’s work has made it possible to move on with this project,” said Massey. “She He noticed something that had escaped everyone: Some of the spectral characteristics duplicate When the stars had their greatest movements toward us and away from us. Without this discovery, the project would have been behind it. ”

The discovery was possible thanks to Careful analysis of new and old data from hubble. Studying the way stars orbit each other and how their light is changed over time, the team was able to discover their sizes, temperatures and the way they interact with each other.

Interestingly, the smallest star of the pair It seems to have sucked mass of your larger companion, spinning faster as a result. This type of interaction is important to understand how stars change over time and how they can eventually explode or collapse in black holes.

Massive stars like these are also protagonists in the cosmic drama of gravitational wavesripples in the spacetime provided by Einstein, which were in 2015.

These massive binary stars can become black holes Binary, which can then merge, creating the waves that scientists now use to explore the universe in entirely new ways.

This discovery adds a vital piece to puzzle How stars shape the universe, and it all started with a closer look at a “diffuse” star in one of the most stunning neighborhoods of the galaxy.

Due to the fact that the stars are very together, only the Hubble space telescope could unveil the image.