In One of Its Last Acts, Arecibo Found a Strange ‘Spider Star’ Crossbreed

Researchers used data collected during the Arecibo telescope’s 57-year run, since destroyed, to make the discovery.

Transcript

00:00researchers using data from the now collapsed arecibo telescope have discovered a bizarre

00:09crossbreed spider star defying classification spider stars belong to a group of stars called

00:15pulsars which sometimes tear away material from their binary companions but spider stars are a

00:21special breed they orbit so close to their partners that they blast away their surfaces

00:27and almost devoured them whole like spiders killing and eating their mates astronomers

00:32typically sort spider stars into two groups black widows and redbacks the key difference is the size

00:39of their binary companions black widow's companions have generally been whittled down much smaller than

00:45those of redbacks while redbacks companions are still large enough to eclipse them viewed from

00:51earth scientists identified three new black widows a redback and a fifth spider star that seems to

00:58be a hybrid of the two the findings use data collected between 2013 and 2018 from puerto

01:04rico's 57 year old arecibo telescope which collapsed in december 2020