Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Another Peanut Star: This One's Yellow!

This was actually discovered a few months ago, but now there's a press release and even a movie: a peanut-shaped binary star system has been discovered (with the LBT!) in the dwarf galaxy Holmberg IX, a companion to the beautiful spiral galaxy, M81:

And, yes, despite the unfortunate date chosen for the press release, this is a real star, and it is actually exciting. And I take full credit for the term "peanut star." Just please ignore the fact that the movie makes the stars look like they're being externally illuminated instead of, you know, generating their own light.

2 comments:

Thordr said...

A close coupled binary star pair, I am actually suprised we dont see more of them

Anonymous said...

I hope we can detect gravitational waves from this, one day....