NASA's Hubble Tracks Down a 'Blue Lurker' Among Stars

January 13, 2025 2:15PM (EST)Release ID: 2025-002
Illustration titled “Evolution of ‘Blue Lurker’ Star System.” It features six boxes, in two rows of three. The top left shows a large circular path of a star surrounding a small circular path of two rotating stars. The top middle box shows two stars rotating around each other, shown with blue streaks, and a third star is in the distance. The top right box shows a large fiery orange star with a feeding line to another distant star. The bottom left box shows a small yellow star on a black background surrounded by a faint red ring of gas. The bottom middle box shows the yellow star with a white box around it. Lines lead from this small box to the bottom right panel, showing a large fiery yellow star. The words “Artist’s Concept” is at the bottom right.

Summary

A Triple Star System Yields an Unusual Surviving Star

Our sun is a lonely star. At least half the stars in our galaxy have binary companions. This was nicely illustrated in the Star Wars movie trilogy where Luke Skywalker watched two suns set on the horizon as seen from his home planet Tatooine. Now imagine three suns in the sky! This is the story for a system that once contained three co-orbiting stars. Forensics with Hubble data show that the stars have had a tumultuous life. Two of the stars merged about 500 million years ago to make a more massive star. It eventually burned out and collapsed to an unusually massive white dwarf. The bystander to this mayhem is the once third member of the system. It siphoned material from the merged companion star to gain a new lease on life by becoming more massive and bright. But, now it is lonely, orbiting a dead star. Hubble discovered that the surviving star has an unusually fast spin rate that can only be explained if it was feeding off of the gas expelled by the stellar merger.

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