A non-peer-reviewed study on arXiv says that scientists from Northwestern University have found a new star by looking at the magnetic field of a star-forming cloud called a stellar nursery.
When clouds of gas and dust collapse and become stars, they eject stellar material at great speeds, according to the university. The magnetic field of the cloud is typically parallel to these eruptions.
When the team of researchers, led by Erin Cox of Northwestern University, was observing cloud L483 with NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), they noted that the magnetic field was not parallel to the star outflows but rather at a 45-degree angle.
Cox hypothesizes that this is due to the possibility of a twin star hiding within the cloud. Using SOFIA, the researchers discovered that a newborn star was developing. However, they discovered another star in the same stellar envelope using radio telescopes at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile.
According to the university, she claims, “TThese stars are still young and still forming.” “The stellar envelope is what supplies the material to form the stars. It’s similar to rolling a snowball in snow to make it bigger and bigger. The young stars are ‘rolling’ in material to build up mass .”
Binary system
A binary system, which consists of two stars, can develop when stellar nurseries are large enough to produce two stars or when the disc that surrounds a young star collapses, producing a second star.
Cox, however, thinks it’s feasible that the stars the team saw may have formed apart before one of them migrated to the other’s location.
That’s what is occurring here, she continues, noting that “newer work that suggests it’s possible to have two stars form far away from each other, and then one star moves in closer to form a binary”. Although, “We don’t know why one star would move toward another one, but we think the moving star shifted the dynamics of the system to twist the magnetic field.”
According to the university, the results provide fresh insight into how stars in binary systems arise and how magnetic fields affect their early growth.
Image Credit: ALMA
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