Interacting Stars: White Dwarf and Its Surrounding Giant Star (Photo)

(Clearwisdom.net) According to a news release from Spaceflightnow.com on April 28, 2005, for the first time an X-ray image of a pair of interacting stars has been made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Chandra observed Mira with its Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer on December 6, 2003 for about 19 hours. The Chandra image shows Mira A (right), a highly evolved red giant star, and Mira B (left), a white dwarf. The stars in Mira AB are about 6.5 billion miles apart, or almost twice the distance of Pluto from the Sun. They are about 420 light years from Earth. To the right of the image is an artist's conception of the Mira star system. Mira A is losing gas rapidly from its upper atmosphere via a stellar wind. Mira B exerts a gravitational tug that creates a gaseous bridge between the two stars. Gas from the wind and bridge accumulates in an accretion disk around Mira B and collisions between rapidly moving particles in the disk produce X-rays.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2005/5/2/100952.html

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