This week, astronomers from the Chandra X-ray observatory have something exciting to share with us. NASA‘s Marshall Space Flight Center which manages the Chandra program and The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center(CXC) that controls science and flight operations from Cambridge, Burlington, and Massachusetts reported that they had detected X-ray flares from an infant star. So why are the researchers excited about this event and what is the impact of this news among the astronomical community?
The thrilling fact is that these X-ray flares may help us understand more about our own star, the Sun. Based on the data received from the observatory, the researchers were able to set a timeline, which indicates the period when sun-like stars would give out high energy radiations. This information is very crucial in understanding our sun and solar atmosphere.
The lead author Nicolas Grosso of Astrophysics Laboratory of Marseille at Aix-Marseille University in France stated that “We don’t have a time machine that lets us directly observe our Sun as it was beginning its life, but the next best thing is to look at analogs of it like HOPS 383,”.
It was in December 2017 that the Chandra had observed an Xray flare from an infant star named HOPS 3831, which is located 400Ly (Light years) from Earth in the star-forming region of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, which lasted about 3hr 20m. This burst of X-rays is similar to the continuous loop of X-ray variation in young stars. After this particular flaring period there was no significant data obtained from the CXC, which indicates that the star is about ten times fainter than the expected maximum flare. It was observed that the flare was also 2000 times more powerful than those emitted by Sun, which is a low mass medium-sized star. So astronomers have to increase the exposure time in order to extract more and more details from this little one.
Also, the artists from the group had given a spectacular illustration of what might be happening around the star. The star is drawn as it is inside a cocoon or more like a half split egg region which is given a beautiful brown shade that describes the gaseous layer surrounding the core of dense gas. This large cloud of gas and dust collapses due to high gas pressure and initiates the birth of the protostar.
During this phase, visible light and infrared radiations (yellow, white) are trapped inside this dark layer and are unable to penetrate out. But the X-rays which are high energy radiations, peep out of this region and these X-ray oscillations are similar to stars having more mass than this. When the material from this cocoon layer falls inside towards the disc, there is a release of dust and gas This “outflow” eliminates angular momentum from the system, allowing the material to fall from the disk onto the growing little star. Astronomers had observed such outflows from HOPS 383 and explain that powerful X-ray flares like the one observed by Chandra could strip electrons from atoms at the base of it. This may be the reason for the magnetic forces responsible for the outflows.
The eruption observed in the radiations is highly energetic in nature. Assuming something similar happened in our Sun, the nuclear reactions caused by this collision could explain unusual abundances of elements in certain types of meteorites found on Earth.
The scientists also share their view that the formation of life-giving sun, the processes that were influenced by the sun (4.5 billion years ago) which shaped the planets and the past of the entire solar system could be reconstructed and it is possible only with the influence of X-rays. All the questions following these assumptions could be verified using more observations. Let us hope that they would be able to surprise us continuously by unravelling more and more mysteries about our host star (Sun).
References:
- Journal: Evidence for magnetic activity at star birth:
a powerful X-ray flare from the Class 0 protostar HOPS 383, - Cornell University
- NASA
- Chandra X-ray Observatory
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