Record-Breaking Stellar Triplets
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Read the news release: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/tess/nasas-tess-spots-record-breaking-stellar-triplets/
Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Video imagery:
- Visualization of TESS data of system TIC 290061484: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
- Artist’s concept of system TIC 290061484, compared to Solar System: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
- Center of the Milky Way, Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/STScI
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Colorful pictures of galaxies, planets, nebulae, and stars. Text: News From the Universe.
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October 11, 2024. Triple-Eclipsing System. T.I.C. 2 9 0 0 6 1 4 8 4. Record-Breaking Stellar Triplets. A blue line graph with regular sharp dips has three blue dots in slightly different shades floating above it. Two of the smaller dots orbit each other as they also orbit the larger dot. A few irregular dips appear in the graph. Text: Working with citizen scientists and AI, astronomers have discovered the most tightly orbiting triple-star system to date, using data from NASA's TESS mission. Located in the constellation Cygnus, the system contains a set of twin stars orbiting each other every 1.8 days, and a third star that circles the pair in just 25 days.
Text: Artist's Concept. A sketch of the three stars shows them glowing blue-white, with the Sun to scale. The triple stars are several times bigger than the Sun, which is orange. The distance between the pair of stars and the other blue star is roughly the distance of the Sun and the Orbit of Mercury. Text: The stars' orbits are so tight that they fit within a space smaller than planet Mercury's orbit around our Sun. Astronomers think the triplet stars formed together from the same growth process, which would have disrupted planets from forming near them. The only position for a planet in this system would be at a distance, orbiting the three stars as if they were a single sun.
Center of the Milky Way. A vast field of space is filled with clusters of white, blue, yellow, and red stars and star clusters. Text: NASA's upcoming Roman Space Telescope will find many more of these systems with its higher resolution, which can distinguish individual starlight in crowded star fields. This news was brought to you in part by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.
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