The team of astronomers from Vanderbilt University found that the stars are moving at very high velocity (hypervelocity star) which is trying to run away from the Milky Way. According to astronomers, the extremely high speed star of a new class.
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| Astronomers have discovered a surprising new class of "hypervelocity stars" that move fast enough to escape the gravitational grip of the Milky Way galaxy. Artist's illustration of the present Milky Way galaxy. (Picture from: http://www.scienceworldreport.com/) |
The discovery was presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington DC and published in the Astrophysical Journal, on January 1, 2014. "Hypervelocity stars is different from that found previously. Previous Star is a big blue stars from the galactic center. Star that we found was small, about the size of the Sun, and surprisingly, no one was coming from the galactic center," said Lauren Palladino, the studies leader.
Paladino find the stars while she charted the Milky Way by calculating orbits the Sun -like star in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey project. Paladino said, the fact that the stars are not coming from the galactic center was weird. Because, usually a very high speed due to the influence of a giant black hole with a mass of 4 billion times than the Sun at the galaxy center.
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| Top and side views of the Milky Way galaxy show the location of four of the new class of hypervelocity stars. These are sun-like stars that are moving at speeds of more than a million miles per hour relative to the galaxy: fast enough to escape its gravitational grasp. The general directions from which the stars have come are shown by the colored bands. (Graphic design by Julie Turner, Vanderbilt University. Top view courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Side view courtesy of the European Southern Observatory.) (Picture from: http://news.vanderbilt.edu/) |
According to Paladino, the presence of high speed star usually associated with the twin stars. If one of the twins pulled a black hole, then the other will be thrown out. Because it does not originate from the galactic center, the origin of the high-speed star is still a mystery.
The team of astronomers say that it boils down to a star's age, speed and position. Through a careful analysis of the spectrum of light from the newfound star HVS17 (short for hypervelocity star 17), the team determined it was 153 million years old and traveling about one million miles an hour through the outer Milky Way.
"The big question is what makes a high-speed star? What worked for them now," Paladino said in the Vanderlit University release, on Thursday, January 9, 2014.. Further research is needed to unravel the mysteries of the high speed stars. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | RESEARCH NEWS@VANDERBILT | DAILY GALAXY | SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN]
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