Astronomers finally detect the harmonic heartbeat of wayward delta Scuti stars

The discovery of hypnotic rhythms pulsating from an enigmatic group of stars is music to astronomers.

Delta Scuti stars, which are about twice as bright and hot as our Sun, are very common in the cosmos.

Key points:

• Many stars pulsate to a regular rhythm but the “music” of delta Scuti stars has been impossible to decipher until now
• Pulsations occur as gas in a star expands and contracts
• Detecting the rhythm of stars can not only help us understand what is happening inside these stars but help us search for planets

more…

> Delta Scuti stars, which are about twice as bright and hot as our Sun, are very common in the cosmos.

This is true. Delta Scuti stars occur where the instability strip crosses the main sequence. As there are a lot of main sequence stars, so there are a lot of Delta Scuti stars. More than the other better known types of variable stars.

> until now the pulsations of delta Scutis had only ever been a jumbled cacophony of noise. Unlike our Sun, which takes about a month to rotate, delta Scuti stars spin very fast, completing a rotation about every 24 hours.

I didn’t know that.

> we’ve found some of these stars do have nice chords, not all of them, but a small fraction. Those with regular beats are just toddlers that have only been burning hydrogen for a few hundred million years.

Ah, so like T-Tauri stars but brighter. Before they’ve settled down into the main sequence.

> The stars that have the nicest pulsation patterns appear to be ones where the poles are pointing towards us.

That makes sense.

> 60 stars from light curve data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

So TESS is useful for things other than finding hot Jupiters. ;-)

Ihavetonuse random

AwesomeO said:

Ihavetonuse random

I have to type on random posts

AwesomeO said:

AwesomeO said:

Ihavetonuse random

I have to type on random posts

Not dead yet

And probabky cos it’s so old it’s unhacable

I have tomspea

I have tomspea