Weirdest Stars in the Universe

24Oct,2024

Credit: Google

A star in the constellation of Centaurus has a secret at its heart.

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Lucy in the sky with diamonds

The star Vega is a familiar sight to any northern hemisphere astronomer. But if we got to see the bright star from a different angle, we’d have a very different view. Because Vega is squashed!

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Vega, the squashed star

There is a giant in our Galaxy, waiting to burst and send a wave of hot gas and radiation towards Earth. That star is WR104.

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WR104, the stellar wind machine

“Supernovae – the explosions of stars – all get bright and then fade within a few months,” says Iair Arcavi, an observational astronomer from University of California, Santa Barbara. When his team first discovered the stellar burst iPFT14hls in 2014 it was already beginning to fade away.

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iPFT14hls, the star that wouldn't die

At first glance, MY Camelopardalis appears to be a fairly common or garden variable star, but on closer inspection astronomers concluded it was a binary pair.

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When 2 become 1

It appeared to be 16 billion years old – two billion years older than the Universe itself.

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HD 140283, the star from before the dawn of time

n 2015, the citizen scientists of the Planet Hunters website found a very unusual exoplanet around the star KIC 8462852.

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Tabby's star