SCI/TECH: Runaway Star Travelling Inbound Towards Milky Way.

Astronomers have found a mysterious young star which is travelling inbound towards the Milky Way at an unusual speed of about 1.6 million miles per hour, or 2.6 million kilometers per hour. The discoverers of star HE 0437-5439, thought at first that the wavelength calibration of their instruments was off, but after confirming the star's spectral information with the European Southern Observatory's telescope in Chile, they discovered that the star seems to have been slingshot probably from the Large Magellanic Cloud, an irregular galaxy that is near but outside the Milky Way and is visible in the southern hemisphere.



The discoverers of the star are still trying to gather more information about the trajectory of the runaway star, but according to astronomer Ralf Napiwotzki of the University of Hertfordshire's Center for Astrophysics Research in the U.K, this will take many years of observing the star.

Napiwotzki, and several German colleages have authored a paper about the star in a coming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, according to the article.


[edit on 17-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Very cool, Hope it don't come to close.

WHOA...that is a very intersting topic.

I agree with the poster just above me...hope it doesnt get too close or things could get a little warm around here! Although it will take many human life cycles to get close to us.

- One Man Short

Nice find!
I have a problem though with one of their possible explainations for what started this star on it's journey. One of the theories is that a much bigger star blew it sideways. If that were to have been the case, I would think that this young star's corona would have been blown away and thus it would be a dark / dead star, or that the explosion would have caused this star to blow as well.

Now thats pretty wild. That speed is just incredible. I wonder, has this ever been observed before? Once it enters our galaxy, is there any chance that it will become a permanent resident, as our galaxys center, or other larger star, grabs a hold of it? Most importantly though, is there any chance that it will come near our little area of the Milky Way? I guess, hopefuly, these questions will be answered through more observation over time. Man, what do you do if a star is heading right at ya? Interesting information.

Originally posted by One Man Short of Manhood
Although it will take many human life cycles to get close to us.

- One Man Short

At 1.6 million miles an hour, 26,666.6666666666666666667 miles per minute. How far away is it?

Here is some information about the LMC

The Large Magellanic Cloud (also known as LMC) is a dwarf galaxy that is in orbit around our own Milky Way galaxy. It is at a distance of about fifty kiloparsecs (50,000 parsecs, or 160,000 light years). It has about 1/20 the diameter of our Galaxy and 1/10 the number of stars (i.e. about 1010 stars). While somewhat irregular in morphology, it does have some traces of spiral structure.

Some speculate that the LMC was once a barred spiral galaxy that was disrupted by the Milky Way, to become type Irr-I. It still contains a central bar structure, and is the fourth largest member of the Local Group, following the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way, and M33 in that order.

It is visible as a faint object in the night sky of the southern hemisphere, straddling the border between the constellations of Dorado and Mensa. It is named after Ferdinand Magellan, who observed it and the companion Small Magellanic Cloud in his circumnavigational voyage around the Earth. (But note that it was already mentioned around 964 by 'Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi in his Book of Fixed Stars.)

It is home to the Tarantula Nebula, the most active starburst region in the Local Group of galaxies.

Excerpted from.
en.wikipedia.org...


[edit on 17-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Muaddib you may want to edit in this related ATS thread to your submission. (SCI/TECH) Link.

Where this star came from, why is it "on the move", and why so fast are all very interesting questions. It's obviously, imo, too young to have traveled all the way from the MBH at the center of the galaxy. A black hole in the LMC isn't out of the question, but would be pretty big news. Gives a whole new meaning to "shooting star"....very interesting.

(edit)fixed link...i think.

[edit on 17-11-2005 by Rren]

Very interesting information.

It could always be like the movie the Fifth Element. Where the star is approaching earth, and the only way to stop it is from the fifth element.

...ehh probably not

Found the following information from ESO about the star.

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers [1] have recorded a massive star moving at more than 2.6 million kilometres per hour. Stars are not born with such large velocities. Its position in the sky leads to the suggestion that the star was kicked out from the Large Magellanic Cloud, providing indirect evidence for a massive black hole in the Milky Way's closest neighbour. These results will soon be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters [2].

"At such a speed, the star would go around the Earth in less than a minute!", says Uli Heber, one of the scientists at the Dr. Remeis-Sternwarte (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany) and the Centre for Astrophysics Research (University of Hertfordshire, UK) who conducted the study.

The hot massive star was discovered in the framework of the Hamburg/ESO sky survey far out in the halo of the Milky Way, towards the Doradus Constellation ("the Swordfish").

"This is a rather unusual place for such a star: massive stars are ordinarily found in the disc of the Milky Way", explains Ralf Napiwotzki, another member of the team. "Our data obtained with the UVES instrument on the Very Large Telescope, at Paranal (Chile), confirm the star to be rather young and to have a chemical composition similar to our Sun."

The data also revealed the high speed of the star, solving the riddle of its present location: the star did not form in the Milky Way halo, but happens to be there while on its interstellar - or intergalactic - travel.

"But when we calculated how long it would take for the star to travel from the centre of our Galaxy to its present location, we found this to be more than three times its age", says Heber. "Either the star is older than it appears or it was born and accelerated elsewhere", he adds.

As a matter of fact, HE0457-5439 - as the star is called - lies closer to one of the Milky Way satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), located 160,000 light-years away from us. The astronomers find it likely for the star to have reached its present position had it been ejected from the centre of the LMC. This could suggest the existence of a massive black hole inside the LMC, in order to have imparted the speeding star the necessary kick.

Another explanation would require the star to be the result of the merging of two stars. In this case, the star could be older that presently thought, giving it time to have travelled all the way from the Milky Way Centre. This scenario, however, requires quite some fine-tuning. The astronomers are now planning new observations to confirm one of the two scenarios.

Excerpted from.
www.eso.org...

Originally posted by SpittinCobra

Originally posted by One Man Short of Manhood
Although it will take many human life cycles to get close to us.

- One Man Short

At 1.6 million miles an hour, 26,666.6666666666666666667 miles per minute. How far away is it?

You mean how far away was it last time they looked, right? Or right now - how far away was it? No telling where it is right this minute - it's taking a bit of time for the light to get here - meanwhile, it's still hurtling at 1.6 million mph. Kind of scary when you start thinking about it, huh?

Originally posted by Rren
Muaddib you may want to edit in this related ATS thread to your submission. (SCI/TECH) Runaway Star Travelling Inbound Towards Milky Way.

Where this star came from, why is it "on the move", and why so fast are all very interesting questions. It's obviously, imo, too young to have traveled all the way from the MBH at the center of the galaxy. A black hole in the LMC isn't out of the question, but would be pretty big news. Gives a whole new meaning to "shooting star"....very interesting.

I have been trying to get to that link you gave me, but it doesn't work. I lost my wireless connection as I was sending some data, we lose connection out here once in a while, we are too far away from civilization.

Actually, that link you gave us takes me straight to this thread.

[edit on 17-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by SpittinCobra



Very cool, Hope it don't come to close.

Thanks for the picture SpittinCobra, I was going to add the large picture, but then realized it was too large. Thanks for the small picture thou.

Originally posted by Muaddib

Originally posted by Rren
Muaddib you may want to edit in this related ATS thread to your submission. (SCI/TECH) Runaway Star Travelling Inbound Towards Milky Way.

Where this star came from, why is it "on the move", and why so fast are all very interesting questions. It's obviously, imo, too young to have traveled all the way from the MBH at the center of the galaxy. A black hole in the LMC isn't out of the question, but would be pretty big news. Gives a whole new meaning to "shooting star"....very interesting.

I have been trying to get to that link you gave me, but it doesn't work. I lost my wireless connection as I was sending some data, we lose connection out here once in a while, we are too far away from civilization.

Actually, that link you gave us takes me straight to this thread.

[edit on 17-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Sorry 'grabbed' the wrong link from the search list(think I accidently linked to this thread...oops). Here ya go: (sci/tech) Mysterious Star Streaks Into the Milky Way At least it was there when i read it yesterday...

Originally posted by Valhall
Kind of scary when you start thinking about it, huh?

This stuff ALWAYS gives me a huge headache.. We're seeing it where it was like 100,000 years ago. So... we'll know where it went in about 100,000 years? But wait... if it was going to hit US it would happen 40,000 years before we know where it's going..

Originally posted by mythatsabigprobe
if it was going to hit US it would happen 40,000 years before we know where it's going..

Ummm.. light travels faster... We would know first.

Originally posted by Rren

Sorry 'grabbed' the wrong link from the search list(think I accidently linked to this thread...oops). Here ya go: (sci/tech) Mysterious Star Streaks Into the Milky Way At least it was there when i read it yesterday...

I see it now. i did not see it before when I did a search. i will transfer any new information I find to that link since someone else already posted this story. Thanks.

[edit on 17-11-2005 by Muaddib]

maybe this is proof that light speed has slowed?

Could a mod please delete this thread since someone else posted it first?

Thanks.

for the information
speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second
converts to 201,000 miles per second

we should get a pretty good warning...


That damned Anubis, and his star slinging ways... first an asteroid, now this...
wont he ever learn?