Star epsilon Aurigae mystery looks to be solved

William Atkins
Friday, 09 April 2010 01:07

Science - Space

Once every 27 years astronomers see a mysterious object passing in front of the star epsilon Aurigae. Based on new images taken in January 2010 when the star was fully eclipsed by this mysterious object, astronomers now think the object is another star with a dusty disk around it.

 

Epsilon Aurigae, a yellow supergiant star in the constellation Auriga (the charioteer), is about 2,000 light-years away from Earth.

For the past 190 years or so, since the 1820s, astronomers have seen a mysterious object travel in front of epsilon Aurigae, what scientists call eclipsing the star (and what happens when we see the moon go in front of the Sun, or vice versa).

In 1821, German astronomer Johann Fritsch was the first astronomer to see the dimming (variability of light) of epsilon Aurigae.

Then, in 1937, three astronomers, Gerard Kuiper, Otto Struve, and Bengt Strömgren, suggested in a published paper that the mysterious object and epsion Aurigae were two members of a binary system.

This binary-disk hypothesis is one of several hypotheses brought forth on the mystery surrounding the star.

 

 

Astronomers have hypthosized that the mysterious object could also be a black hole, a dusty nebula, or (as earlier stated) another star, with a dusty disk around it, in a binary system with epsilon Aurigae.

 

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