Binary System R Aquarii
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Read the news release: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-021
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:
- Hubble image of R Aquarii: NASA, ESA, Matthias Stute , Margarita Karovska , Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Hubble)
- Animation of accreting white dwarf: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
- Timelapse of Hubble R Aquarii images: NASA, ESA, Matthias Stute , Margarita Karovska , Davide De Martin , Mahdi Zamani , N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)
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Various planets, galaxies, and nebulae are shown. Text: News from the Universe.
Binary System R Aquarii, October 24, 2024; A star system and white dwarf with surrounding red-orange nebulae; Text: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope provides a unique look at the binary star system R Aquarii, with observations spanning nine years;
The system is made of two very different types of stars orbiting one another: a cool red giant star and a small white dwarf star.
A white dwarf spins with a ring of nebulae surrounding it, and a neighboring red giant.
Text: Every 44 years, as the white dwarf makes its closest approach to the red giant, it siphons off some of its hydrogen gas.
Gas from the red giant accumulates on the white dwarf star's surface until it causes an eruption of huge filaments of material moving at 1 million miles per hour.
The outflows are twisted by the force of the explosion and channeled upwards and outwards by strong magnetic fields.
From a distance, the white, blue, orange, and red nebulae gases spread out in a curved X shape.
Text: Astronomers have traced the material out to at least 248 billion miles from the stars.
This news was brought to you in part by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
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