Strange spiral discovered around giant star
A research team, with scientists from Uppsala University, have made a surprising discovery using ALMA, the world’s most powerful telescope. A spiral structure of gas circling the red giant star R Sculptoris.
Red giants have powerful winds and produce huge amounts of dust and gas which later will become the raw material for new generations of stars and solar systems – and eventually also new life. The strange shape found surrounding R Sculptoris was probably created by a previously unknown star circling the red giant and ploughing up trails in the gas.
Even though the ALMA telescope (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) had not been completed when the observations were made, the telescope was able to output much better images than other, previous observations. Neither the spiral structure nor any second star have been detected before. Yet another surprise for the astronomers was that the red giant has thrown out much more matter into space than previously thought. The study, which has been published by Nature, describes one of the first ever discoveries made using ALMA.
Matthias Maercker, astronomer at European Southern Observatory and at the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn, is primary author of the article.
‘The strength of ALMA is that we can see such fine details. We have always expected ALMA to give us new perspectives on the universe, but to make new, surprising discoveries already with some of the first observations is very fun’, he says.
Since many years, studies are being conducted at Uppsala University to find out how the winds on red giants arise. Co-author Sofia Ramstedt worked together with Matthias Maercker at the University of Bonn when the spiral around R Sculptoris was discovered, but is now working at Uppsala University.
‘The images show the winds around a red giant with amazing detail. The shell and the spiral have been built up over a long time, and with the help of the new observations we can follow what happened when they were created’, she says.
According to the scientists, these types of observations will in the near future help us understand how the elements that we ourselves consist of have reached earth and other planets. Also, they will give us clues to our own sun’s distant future.