- Attachments : AFGL 3068 Spiral
- In order to get his faint picture the Hubble Space Telescope had to use a 33 minute time exposure. At the center of the spirals is a binary star system. One star is Red-Giant carbon star. The companion is blue-white star. The two stars are orbiting each other at a separation of 103 Astronomical Units. ( 103 AU is about 2 times the orbit of Pluto, see footnote 1 ). The orbit takes 800 years for one revolution.
- The Red Giant star sheds a high-intensity solar wind of material, about one Solar Mass every 700 years. (10^-3 Solar Mass / year). The material is carbon dust, fine black dust that surrounds the star and blocks the light. This dust photosphere has a temperature of 300 degrees Kelvin. The companion helps pull the escaping dust into a spiral like water from a spinning sprinkler head. The stream of black dust is traveling at 33,000 miles per hour ( 14.7 Km/sec).
- The spirals in the sky make 5 turns spread over 1/3rd of a lightyear. The binary stars orbital emissions are clockwork precision. The orbital period of 800 years creates an easily seen spacing between the spirals..
- The spirals of dark carbon dust are not emitting any glow. The dust is blocking all the star’s light. So, how are we seeing these spirals in visible light? It turns out that it is the star light from our own Milky Way Galaxy that is shining off the spirals.
- Our own Sun will become a “ Carbon Star” some day. It is the evolution of a dying star that is less than 1.4 Solar Mass. After the thermo-nuclear furnace at the core of the star burns all of the hydrogen ( fusion from hydrogen to helium), it begins fusing helium into carbon. The star expands into a Red Giant Star. The expansion is pulsating and blows its outer layers into space creating a super-solar wind. This cloud of material becomes a “Planetary Nebula” enclosed in a cocoon of this material. ( This whole process is much more complicated. I have given the shortened version.)
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(1) The diameter of the spirals is 0.11 arc seconds. At 3,000 lightyears away. The tangent of the angle times the distance tells us the diameter of the spirals.
--------------- 0.11 arc seconds * 4.8^10^-6 radians / arc second = 0.528^10^-6 radians * 3,000 lightyears = 1.584*10^-3 lightyears * 6.324*10^4 AU per lightyear = 100 AU.
--------------- There are 63,400 Astronomical Units in one lightyear.
--------------- one arc second = 0.0000048 radians.
(2) Carbon atoms form long, complex molecules that absorb visible light. That is why the binary stars are nearly invisible.
(3) Infrared is longer wavelengths and its light passes through the carbon dust without scattering. This is similar to a boat not stopping the big waves that pass right on by while the small waves splash on the side of the boat and scatter backwards. In this case the visible light is the smaller wavelengths that scatter and do not get through the carbon dust.
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707-536-3272, Tuesday, January 24, 2012
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