U. Toledo professor finds "cosmic fountain" in Red Rectangle nebula

[Bill McBlueState]

Professor finds cosmic fountain

Joe Griffith
Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thousands of light years from Earth, a “cosmic dust fountain” is propelling gas and dust throughout the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have discovered.

The dust fountain, which is actually a binary star system — or two stars orbiting each other — is located 2,300 light years away in the Red Rectangle Nebula within the constellation Monoceros, said Adolf Witt, a distinguished professor emeritus of astronomy at UT.

Over the past seven years, Witt and six other collaborators have been observing the rotation of the binary system to accumulate the stars’ entire orbital period, which is the time it takes for one star to orbit the other. Although the 320-day orbital period of the system is similar to the 365-day orbital period of Earth, Witt said the period shifts slightly each year by about one-and-a-half months.

...

Witt said his team of astronomers were able to determine that the second star is similar to the sun. Although the Giant star has the similar mass to its smaller counterpart, it is less dense and in the process of losing mass. As the Giant star begins to lose its mass, the material flows into a disk around the smaller star. As the mass falls toward the smaller star, it moves faster, gains density and heats up, creating an accretion disk roughly 20,000 degrees in temperature, the hottest point in the system, Witt said.

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