A star that exploded into brightness nearly 200 years ago can now be explored. The Homunculus Nebula was modeled in three dimensions by a team of scientists in a new video.
By the early 1840s, the Eta Carinae was one of the best stars in the night sky. The star was obscured from view by the gradual expansion of the Homunculus Nebula, which ejected gas and dust into the space around it.
The Homunculus Nebula's bi-lobed shape can help us better understand the eruptions of massive stars and how they travel through space. It is one of the closest examples of this type of system, so we have studied it a lot.
The new models are similar to the ones before. Hubble and Chandra observations have revealed details in visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray radiation, while the Spitzer Space Telescope has contributed to the reconstruction of the wider Carina Nebula.
The team did an amazing job representing the volumetric layers that viewers can easily comprehend, said astronomer Frank Summers of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
We can tell the story of the Great Eruption, but also show the result in 3D.
The region is so dusty that it is difficult to get a good look at the stars. We know that there are at least two stars. The mass of the Sun is between 30 and 80 times that of the other. They are in contact with each other once every five years.
The stars are short-lived and will erupt occasionally. The Great Eruption of the 1840s was thought to be a trinary because of the two stars colliding and merging. One of the outstanding questions is how one of the stars may be bigger than the other.
Depending on the level of light pollution, Eta Carinae is visible to the naked eye. Astronomers believe that it could end its life in a massive supernova, which in turn could see the formation of a stellar-mass black hole.
The future of the binary is difficult to predict because we don't know much about the stars. Stars in close stellar binaries can disrupt the normal course of events.
This means that we can understand massive stars with the help of Eta Carinae. The data can be used to explore the nebula. Cosmic phenomena can be made accessible to our other senses, such as hearing or touch, which can lead to new insights.
Kim Arcand, a visualization scientist at the Chandra X-ray Center, said that they can use models like the one for Eta Car in 3D printing and augmented reality programs.
You can find more information on the Universe Unplugged website.
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