Astronomers Image Distant Star That Has a Boiling Surface With Bubbles 75-Times the Size of the Sun

Amaze Lab

The Sun is massive, however, it’s tiny compared to one in a system 180 light-years away. That red giant star, called R Doradus, is around 350 times the width of the Sun and its surface is boiling.

Transcript

00:00The Sun is massive, however, it looks tiny compared to the central star in a system 180

00:09light years away.

00:11Its red giant star called Ardoratus is around 350 times the width of the Sun and it is in

00:16its final stages of life.

00:18However, what's even wilder is that the surface of that star is bubbling and astronomers have

00:23recently calculated that those bubbles are gargantuan as well.

00:27Researchers say the boiling bubbles of Ardoratus are some 75 times the size of our Sun.

00:31So why are there bubbles?

00:33A star's heat is generated inside at its core with that heat then moving outward to its

00:37surface via convection.

00:39Our Sun does this too, but its bubbles are much smaller, only around 620 miles across

00:44or just smaller than the state of Texas.

00:47Astronomers say simply observing these bubbles is something that is blowing their minds as

00:50well with one of the researchers saying about it, we had never expected the data to be such

00:54high quality that we could see so many details of the convection of the stellar surface.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended