Introduction: Scientists have discovered the six-star system, which consists of three binary star systems. On the one hand, it is 1900 light-years away from Earth, and it is bright enough to be detected by the transit exoplanet survey satellite TESS. On the other hand, the six stars behave in a special way, they are composed of three sets of binary star systems: two sets of binary star systems orbiting each other to form a four-star system, and the third set of binary star systems and this four-star system orbit each other.
cruel! There is a six-star system that we discovered! What's even cooler is that it's made up of three binary star systems. The coolest thing is that there will also be "star eclipses" between them!
This discovery deserves our "wow puppet" surprise: astronomers have discovered a six-star system. If we look at the range of that galaxy for a period of time, we will find that all six stars will undergo a "star eclipse" at a certain time, disappearing for a period of time like a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse.
Wow.
Multi-star systems are inherently cool, meaning that two or more "suns" can be seen on the planets over there. Unlike our single-shadow sun, a multi-star system has two or more stars. They are stable in their respective orbits, accompanied by gravity. Nearly half of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy are similar multi-star systems. Most of them are inseparable, orbiting binary star systems, while others are three-star systems. There are even fewer galaxies with more than three stars, and they belong to higher-order systems.
This is what makes TYC 7037-89-1 galaxy special: it is a six-star star, a galaxy with six stars! It's more than 1900 light-years away from us, which is quite a long way. But it was so bright that it was captured by our TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Detection Satellite). TESS scans the sky, measuring the brightness of the stars, looking for exoplanets that have swept through the stars. These planets have exposed their presence on their stars.
But it can also find a lot of other interesting things. In the TESS data, TYC 7037-89-1 looks like a star, but its brightness changes — it's a variable star. Astronomers found the galaxy when looking for these variable stars that would change brightness in some way in TESS data, noting that it was a multi-star system.
Astronomers are looking for a binary star system that has been eclipsed. Not only are these stars spinning around each other, but in our lenses, their orbits are almost on the edge. So these stars seem to us to be passing shoulders in front of each other. When this happens, the light coming from the pair of stars slowly dims in a special way. Astronomers have installed automatic star-hunting software to help find stars like this. In a vast sea of nearly 500,000 stars, they found 100 three- or more-star systems.
That's where TYC 7037-89-1 comes in. It's not just six stars all moving in their own way, but in the form of binary stars – one pair of stars orbits another pair of stars, while a third pair of stars orbits them at the same time!
Orbital map of a hexagram (non-equal proportions): Three similar binary stars orbit each other.
Source - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
These pairs of binary stars are named A, B, and C in order of brightness. Each of these stars is given a number of 1 or 2 (also in order of brightness). The two inner binary stars are A (consisting of stars A1 and A2) and C (C1 and C2 stars), with binary stars B (B1 and B2) orbiting more distantly. The distance between A and C is about 600 million kilometers (very close to the distance from Jupiter to the Sun). They take about four years to orbit each other — something determined by archiving data from other telescopes, including WASP and ASAS-SN. B orbits A and B at a distance of about 38 billion kilometers, with a cycle of 2000.
Now, the coolest part of the galaxy is coming: all three pairs of stars are dim binary stars. We see that the orbits of these three binary stars are almost all on the edge. A1 and A2 eat each other every 1.57 days (A1 eats A2, then halfway around the orbit before it's A2's turn to eat A1), so we know they're very close. C1 and C2 occur every 1.31 days in a similar process to A1 and A2, while B1 and B2 take 8.2 days
The work of art of the universe – the binary star system. The orbits we see are both at the edge, so both stars are eroding in the same orbit. Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA)
Since each star in any pair will eat with its companions, by measuring the time it takes to eclipse and other parameters (including shooting spectra), we can learn some important data, such as how big the stars are, how hot they are, or much more. This has another surprise – they are very similar to each other, they are triads!
In each binary system, the larger stars are about 1.5 times the diameter of the Sun, slightly warmer, and have about 1.25 times the mass of the Sun, while the smaller stars are also similar: about 0.6 times the mass of the Sun and about 0.6 times the diameter of the Sun, which are very different from each other, but they are very similar and very peculiar.
Such galaxies can be said to be rare. Models of how stars form show that hexagrams are made up of two three-body galaxies orbiting each other more than three binary stars, so this galaxy is very rare, and it is even more rare for all three binary stars to be seen.
...", it seems". In fact, they are likely to be formed by a rotating disk of matter. Each star collapsed out of it, so it's likely that the three orbital planes of the binary star are all the same. This means that if we can observe the trajectory of one of them, we can know the trajectories of the remaining stars, or close to their actual position information. This makes them less likely to disappear into the night sky at the same time than we thought.
Same as above, but we see the approximate angle of the star's orbit. Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Phil Plait enlarged image
I would also like to point out that although we see individual stars in binary stars at the edge of the binary system, the orbits of the binary stars are not like this, because we see the orbits of A and C orbiting each other at an angle of about 40°. However , B 's orbital inclination is not well observed.
Hopefully, long-term research into this system will shed more information on how they form. We don't know much about multi-system galaxies like this. If I could understand under what conditions they formed, I think it would be very interesting.
Rafi used a navigation hologram to show Enoch a schematic of the eight-star system, like the "broken pieces" in the Star Trek: Picard episode. Image source: CBS
I know, it's a headache. So many tracks, angles, stars... Sometimes the natural world is complex and difficult to fully understand. I made a similar virtual system that played a key role in the first season of Star Trek: Picard. A multi-satellite system somewhat similar to TYC 7037-89-1 is known; for example, CzeV1640 is a quadruple system with two dim binary stars. Nature is complex, but sometimes a little lazy, reusing an idea.
But! Oh, my God! I want to own a spaceship like the Enterprise, spanning thousands of light-years of tranquil stars, to see this spectacular cosmic wonder up close and look at these six stars – six! Perform a gorgeous dance of stars around each other.....
This is truly a strange new world
BY: Phil Plait
FY: Lightning
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