This star system consists of a set of binary stars, two stars orbiting each other, and a more massive star orbiting the binary.
Alejandro Vigna-Gomez said: “As far as we know, this is the first such object ever detected. We know that there are manySamsungsystems, but their mass is usually much smaller. The massive stars in this three-star system are very close together — it’s a compact system. The orbital period of a binary star (about 1 day) is the same as the rotation period of the Earth (1 day). The combined mass of the two of them is 12 times the mass of our sun — so quite large stars. The third star is about 16 times the mass of our sun, or even bigger! Its inner orbit is circular, with the third star orbiting the binary nearly six times a year. Pretty fast, when you consider their size – unsurprisingly, the system is so bright that at first they were detected as stellar binaries. “
The initial discovery of the unusual properties of this highly exotic system is equally remarkable because it was discovered by amateur astronomers.
When a group of amateur astronomers combed through a public dataset of NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), they discovered something unusual.
The level of expertise of amateurs can be said to be quite high, and they have made professional astronomers aware of anomalies in detection. They found that what was previously thought to be two stars is actually three.
Postdoc Alejandro Vigna-Gomez explained that when investigating the formation of this star system, several options were considered.
For example, if the larger star formed first, it would likely eject material that disrupted the formation of such a close binary.
Another possibility is that the binary and third star formed separately and eventually met and locked into their orbits due to gravity.
– or a third possibility, where two binary stars formed, one of which merged into a larger star.
That’s where the combined knowledge of dynamics experts Bin Liu and Alejandro Vigna-Gomez on star formation comes into play. They coded the options and ran over 100,000 iterations on the computer to evaluate the most likely outcome for this scenario.
It turned out that they favored the initial formation of two binary star systems, one of which merged with one star. Their results show that two binary star schemes can, in fact, explain the origin of triplet systems.
“Now we have a model of the most probable scenario for this unique system. But just one model is not enough. There are two ways to prove or disentangle our theory of this formation,” explains postdoc Alejandro. “One is to study the system in detail, and the other is to perform a statistical analysis of the stellar population. If we study the system in detail, we will have to rely on the expertise of astronomers. We already have some preliminary observations, but we still need Go through the data and make sure we interpret that data well.”
Bin Liu continued: “We also encourage people in the scientific community to dig deeper into the data. Maybe there are more compact systems buried in the data. What we really want to know is whether such systems are common in our universe.”
Alejandro Vigna-Gomez and Liu Bin have now planned quite a bit of work for themselves: “We need to find a telescope somewhere in the world with enough observation time and talk to people who are really experts from an observational point of view. The data from the telescope needs to be understood properly. What you see in the telescope, so to speak, is not exactly what you get. It has to be interpreted.”
As a result, more collaborations are underway, very much in the spirit of the Niels-Bohr Institute, Alejandro said: “A Chinese and a Mexican in their respective fields — dynamics and star formation — in Nigeria. The Bohr Institute met and is now moving towards more scientific collaborations.”