* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

S Orionis

Blobrana · L

Using the largest telescopes available, astronomers have dissected the dusty, gassy layers of the red giant S Orionis a star that pulsates in size from a diameter roughly equal to the orbit of Mars to that of Jupiter every 410 days.
The information provides a glimpse at the future of our own sun, which will puff into a red giant like S Orionis in about 5 billion years, said astronomer David Boboltz of the U.S. Naval Observatory.

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Blobrana · L

Two of the World's Largest Interferometric Facilities Team-up to Study a Red Giant Star
Using ESO's VLTI on Cerro Paranal and the VLBA facility operated by NRAO, an international team of astronomers has made what is arguably the most detailed study of the environment of a pulsating red giant star. They performed, for the first time, a series of coordinated observations of three separate layers within the star's tenuous outer envelope: the molecular shell, the dust shell, and the maser shell, leading to significant progress in our understanding of the mechanism of how, before dying, evolved stars lose mass and return it to the interstellar medium.

S Orionis (S Ori) belongs to the class of Mira-type variable stars. It is a solar-mass star that, as will be the fate of our Sun in 5 billion years, is nearing its gloomy end as a white dwarf. Mira stars are very large and lose huge amounts of matter. Every year, S Ori ejects as much as the equivalent of Earth's mass into the cosmos.

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