The brightest star in the constellation of Virgo is actually a binary system! And the closest to the sun. It's formed by a blue giant and a variable star, they orbit so close together that they've gained an ellipsodal shape, similar to that of an egg
Explosions Discovered Near Galactic Center - February 28th, 1996.
"Tremendous explosions near the center of our galaxy were discovered in December, 1995, and were announced by a paper in Nature and a press conference at NASA. Bursts like these had never been seen before, and so the exact cause was unknown and was said to likely be the source of astronomical speculations and observations for years to come. Much more powerful than any explosions we humans can create, these eruptions likely involve the extreme conditions found only on the surface of a neutron star in a binary system, possibly similar to the X-ray binary system depicted in the above drawing. The new source, dubbed GRO J1744-28 for its discovery spacecraft and position, produces multiple pulsed bursts of energy per day, each of which last several seconds. The bursts are quite prominent in X-ray light. Discovery team leaders included Chryssa Kouveliotou (USRA) and Gerald Fishman (NASA /MSFC)."
If you had to guess, which planet/moon do you think would most likely be Noman’s Land/Gunsmoke?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while (because my latest obsession is astronomy, although it’s also a long running one). In both animes and manga there are two suns, but I’ve been generally looking at exoplanets (planets outside our Solar System) within the habitable zone of their stars, thinking it would be complicated to find a two-star (binary) system that could have any kind of habitability. Yesterday though I found THIS OFFICIAL ART FROM NASA:
(Look at this, it’s so pretty!)
Turns out, NASA has a whole site that is… kind of an AU in which space travel is viable, and they explain how these planets would look like and what events would be cool to see in them and whatnot. They even have some 3D rendering from the surface of those planets so that you can see how it would look like! When I say this website is cool, I’m underselling it:
ANYWAY, back to Trigun shenanigans! When I saw the poster for Kepler-16b, I realized that yes, you could actually live on a planet of a binary system! These are called circumbinary planets, and a funny detail when you read the Wikipedia page:
A quick note on nomenclature: from what I’ve gathered, the name of the star system is followed by a letter or two. If it’s in caps, it’s a star, with A being the primary one and B the secondary; if it’s in lower case, it’s a planet. The planet counter always (?) starts at b, so if there are seven planets in the system called TRAPPIST-1 they would be TRAPPIST-1b, TRAPPIST-1c, TRAPPIST-1d…
Another important note is that there are two types of planetary configuration: If the planet only orbits one star, it’s called S-Type (or non-circumbinary planet); if it orbits both stars, it’s called P-Type (or circumbinary). Hope this didn’t get too confusing!
So I’ve made a list of binary systems that could potentially host human life. Which one do you think would be the best choice?
Kepler-16: the NASA poster one, its planet unofficially called “Tatooine” amongst scientists (good for them). 16b (the planet) is, however, a gas giant like Saturn, so it would be impossible to live there. If it has a moon with an atmosphere though, that could host life! And we’d get to see in the sky two stars and one bigass planet covering a good chunk of it. Pretty neat 🪐
Kepler-35: The planet discovered here is not within the habitable zone, but there is a high chance there might be other rocky planets in it. We can just make it up however we want it to be ✨
Kepler-38: Same as 35, but also the mass of the planet is unknown (I think? Wikipedia says one thing and NASA another, so idk)
Kepler-47: It has 3 planets, which is very cool 🪐🪐🪐 The second one, 47c, is within the habitable zone, but it would be the same case as 16b (living on a moon). The other two planets would also be perfectly visible, I think.
PH1/Kepler-64: First circumbinary planet found in a quadruple (FOUR STARTS ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) system, and the discovery was made by citizens! How cool is that!? The planet orbits two of them, but the other system is fairly near and probably influences the planet?. They’re probably perfectly visible from the surface.
ROXs 42: Not much known about the planet, but it orbits the secondary star and has an atmosphere💫 That’s because it’s a gas giant, so it’s not habitable and we’d have to use a moon. Would be cool to see the stars wandering the sky on different paths though, since it’s the only S-Type system in this list!
Kepler-453: I’ve gotten confusing info about the habitability zone on this system, but we know that there’s a gas giant half the size of Jupiter 🤔
Kepler-1647: Same as Kepler-16 and 47. Apparently the system would be capable of sustaining an Earth-sized moon! 🌑
A quick sketch of how each of them would look like:
So, after that long post, which one do you guys think would be the most interesting for Noman’s Land?
The nova T Coronae Borealis explodes about once every 80 years.
The Corona Borealis is home to a white dwarf star named T Coronae Borealis. It is in a binary star system with a red giant type star.
As the red giant in T CrB's system ejects matter, T CrB's gravity attracts or collects it and puts it on its own surface, doing so for years and years, until it reaches its limit.
REFERENCE LINKS IN THE ARTICLE
Binary Star Systems
April's total solar eclipse is being highly anticipated by scientists, eclipse chasers and festival-goers alike.
The system is made of two stars, a large red giant whose outer layers are loosely bound to it and a tiny and dense white dwarf, the degenerate core of a former red giant. The two objects are in a parasitic relationship.
The white dwarf steals material from the red giant. This process might one day push the white dwarf beyond a certain mass limit and turn it into a supernova, which would destroy the star
This explosion happened once every 15 years and makes the white dwarf shine brighter
