Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (IAA)
Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Latest news
- [20/09/2017] Ageing Star Blows Off Smoky Bubble
Astronomers have used the ALMA radio telescope array to capture a strikingly beautiful view of a delicate bubble of expelled material around the exotic red star U Antliae. These observations will help astronomers to better understand how stars evolve during the later stages of their life-cycles.
In the faint southern constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump) the careful observer with binoculars will spot a very red star, which varies slightly in brightness from week to week. This very unusual star is called U Antliae and new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are revealing a remarkably thin spherical shell around it.
This research was presented in a paper entitled “Rings and filaments. The remarkable detached CO shell of U Antliae”, by F. Kerschbaum et al., to appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The team includes C. Paladini (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium).
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