ESO/M. Kornmesser, L. Sidewalk
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Illustration of a two-star system where micronovae can occur. The blue disc swirling around the bright white dwarf in the center of the image is made up of material, mostly hydrogen, stolen from its companion star.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id – A team of astronomers, with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s VLT (ESO’s VLT) Very Large Telescope, has observed the type star explosion new, known as microns. These explosions occur on the surface of certain stars, and each of them can burn about 3.5 billion of the ‘Great Pyramid of Giza’ stellar matter in just a few hours.
“We have discovered and identified for the first time what we call a micronova,” explains Simone Scaringi, an astronomer from Durham University in the UK who led a study on this explosion whose results have been published in the journal Nature pada 20 April 2022 dengan judul “Localized thermonuclear bursts from accreting magnetic white dwarfs”.
“This phenomenon challenges our understanding of how thermonuclear explosions in stars occur. We thought we knew this, but this discovery proposes a completely new way to achieve it,” he added.
Micronova is a very powerful event, but small in astronomical scale; they are far less energetic than the stellar explosions known as new, which astronomers have known for centuries. Both types of explosions occur in white dwarfs, dead stars about the mass of our Sun, but as small as Earth’s.
White dwarfs in two-star systems can steal matter, mostly hydrogen, from their companion stars if they are close enough. When this gas falls onto the surface of a very hot white dwarf, it triggers hydrogen atoms to explosively fuse into helium. In a nova, this thermonuclear explosion occurs over the entire surface of the star.
Mark Garlick
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Illustration of a two-star system, with a white dwarf (in the foreground) and a companion star (in the background), where a micronova can occur. The white dwarf steals matter from its companion, which is funneled to its poles. When matter falls on the white dwarf’s hot surface, it triggers a micronova explosion, which is contained at one of the star’s poles.
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“Such a detonation causes the entire surface of the white dwarf to burn and glow brightly for several weeks,” explains Nathalie Degenaar, a co-author and an astronomer at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
A micronova is a similar explosion that is smaller in scale and faster, lasting only a few hours. They occur in some white dwarfs with strong magnetic fields, which channel material toward the star’s magnetic poles.
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