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Hubble Chronicles Mysterious Outburst

Posted by chrisd on from the formerly-small-star dept.

An eruptive star that brightened to 600,000 times its initial intensity and briefly outshone all others in the Milky Way Galaxy has astronomers amazed and puzzled over what happened...The star, named V838 Monocerotis, has suddenly grown so big that if placed in the center of our solar system it would engulf Jupiter.

2 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. "Suddenly" actually does mean suddenly here by ksdd · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The star, named V838 Monocerotis, has suddenly grown so big...

    While I was RTFA, I pretty much expected that this "sudden" event would be revealed as sudden only when measured in geologic or cosmic time; say, a few thousand millenia or so. The fact that this happened over only a few months is fascinating.

  2. it's not like a supernova. . . by astrobabe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was with Mark (Wagner) and Sumner (Starrfield) when we got the spectra. . .now I'm going to be really pissed if I'm not on the paper since I was the one taking the spectra. . . But anyhow. . .the spectra is really interesting, there are P Cygni profiles for every emission line in the spectra (P Cygni's look like half a gaussian in emission with a sharp cutoff to be half a gaussian in absorption). This object was actually noticed by people looking at variable stars and then was picked up by some other folks in Arizona which showed the light echos even in the relatively low resolution images we got on the ground compared to our HST ACS images.