Sentences with phrase «hypervelocity stars»
"Hypervelocity stars" refer to stars that move extremely fast through space. They travel at such high speeds that they are able to escape the gravitational pull of their home galaxies. Full definition
Brown discovered the first hypervelocity star in 2005.
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The star, dubbed HE 0437 - 5439, is an early - type star and one of ten so - called hypervelocity stars so far found speeding away from the Milky Way.
There are alternative scenarios, but none explains why most of the 20 or so hypervelocity stars found so far are all in the same area of sky, in the Leo and Sextans constellations.
Discovered in 2005, US 708 differs from other known hypervelocity stars.
But a new study shows that most of the 20 or so hypervelocity stars found so far might actually come from outside our own galaxy, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy orbiting the Milky Way at nearly 400 kilometers per second.
US 708 is one of roughly a couple dozen suns known as hypervelocity stars.
US 708 has another peculiar property in marked contrast to other hypervelocity stars: it is a rapidly rotating, compact helium star likely formed by interaction with a close companion.
Until now, scientists have largely believed that such hypervelocity stars originate when binary stars get torn apart by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which consumes one star and flings the other away at incredible speeds.
Confirmation will hopefully come next year when Europe's star - mapping satellite Gaia publishes its full catalog: The team predicts it should find more hypervelocity stars along the past and future orbit of the LMC.
Astronomers suspect that most hypervelocity stars leave the Milky Way after a close brush with the supermassive black hole that sits at the center of our galaxy.
There are about two dozen so - called hypervelocity stars known to be escaping the galaxy.
These superfast planets (called hypervelocity planets) are produced the same way as hypervelocity stars.
As the team report today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and at the U.K. National Astronomy Meeting in Hull, most of the known hypervelocity stars have trajectories that would fit this scenario.
And because the LMC is orbiting the Milky Way at nearly 400 kilometers per second, a star ejected from it could be moving faster than the 500 kilometers per second that makes it a hypervelocity star in the Milky Way.
Now Warren Brown of the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues have used red - shift data and Hubble Space Telescope images to trace the path taken by the hypervelocity star HE 0437 - 5439.
Several such «hypervelocity stars» have so far been detected, but their precise origin was unclear.
Hypervelocity stars, and the black holes that launch them, whip through space at millions of miles per hour.
They discovered what they call a hypervelocity star, which moves three times faster than our sun does through the galaxy.
Other so - called hypervelocity stars are thought to have been boosted to their high speeds by close encounters with our galaxy's supermassive black hole (see Hypervelocity stars: Catch them while you can), but this star is too young to have travelled all the way from the centre of the Milky Way.
A hypervelocity star appears to be the remains of a three - star system, one star of which was digested by the Milky Way's black hole, with the other two being combined and hurled away.
In the case 2), the candidate is a hypervelocity star which moves so fast that it can escape from the gravity of the Galaxy.
However, no hypervelocity star has been found in the Galactic center and the number is theoretically predicted to be much less than that of black holes.
Only a few so - called hypervelocity stars are known to travel with velocities so high that they are unbound, meaning they will not orbit the galaxy, but instead will escape its gravity to wander intergalactic space.
Additionally, the results of the new study challenge the commonly accepted scenario that hypervelocity stars are accelerated by the supermassive black hole at the galactic center.
These astronomers were able to measure the relative abundances of certain elements for the first time in any hypervelocity star.
Proper motions and trajectories for 16 extreme runaway and hypervelocity stars.
In this artist's illustration, a hypervelocity star is hurtling through space beyond the Milky Way.