Menu

Post image 1
Post image 2
Post image 3
1 / 3
0

Tiny Dust Grains From Massive Stars: How the Smallest and Largest Are Linked

Universe Today·Evan Gough·7 months ago
#h7MWAb
#dust#grains#stars#star#distribution#article
Reading 0:00
15s threshold

Aging stars are prolific producers of dust, and the dust plays an important role in the cosmos. Their dust is ejected into the interstellar medium (ISM) where it is taken up in the next generation of stars and planets. This is how stars seed their environments with metals, elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, which are necessary for rocky planets and life to form. Astronomers study this stellar dust to learn more about how it's produced and spread into the cosmos. Wolf-Rayet (WR) binaries are natural laboratories for this work. WR stars are extremely massive and hot stars whose winds have blown away their outer hydrogen envelopes. Studying dust in binary pairs involving a WR star is important because of the vast amounts of dust that these stars generate. In a binary system, this becomes even more advantageous. The wind from a lone WR star can be too hot and too diffuse to condense into dust.…

Continue reading — create a free account

Join HashtagPLUS to read full articles, follow hashtags, vote, and join the conversation.

Read More