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Friday, May 30th, 2008

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Most powerful star discovered

Published: Wednesday, October 8, 1997

Wednesday, October 8, 1997

Most powerful star discovered

RESEARCH: Scientists at UCLA detect body to be largest known

By Hannah Miller

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

First a Nobel Prize, then the most powerful star in the universe. In the second UC science coup this week, UCLA researchers have discovered a massive heavenly body called the "Pistol Star" that could measure up to 279 million miles in diameter.

Led by a 31-year-old UCLA graduate and utilizing one of the most cutting-edge techniques in the field of astronomy, the team set out in 1993 to investigate the center of the galaxy.

With the help of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, they could see beyond the clouds of Earth's atmosphere.

And the star they found, first sighted in 1995 but not studied since, had 10 million times the energy of our sun.

"Personally, I thought that this was a massive star," said Dr. Don F. Figer, the team's leader. "I was happy to receive confirmation of that."

And it is huge. It releases as much energy in 6 seconds as the sun does in a year. At its birth, it could have been the most massive star to have ever existed. And if you placed the Pistol Star at the center of our solar system, it would engulf our sun - as well as the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

The images produced by the five researchers show the star suspended within a bright, pistol-shaped nebula, a gaseous cloud from which the star gets its name. The image adds support to Figer's theory that the star produced the nebula. He says more study of both will yield insights into star formation and evolution.

The technique that they used to make all these judgements, infrared imaging, has only come into widespread use in the last few years. It has the potential to register images where visible-light photography can't.

"The star was found (with ground-based telescopes), but we had to be able to take a picture with very good resolution," said Dr. Ian McLean, a UCLA professor of astronomy and physics. Infrared was the only imaging technique that could take such a picture.

"The center of the galaxy is impossible to see without infrared," said McLean. "There's too much dust blocking it, like a smoke screen."

That interstellar dust is made up of tiny particles suspended in space. They block all visible light coming from the Pistol Star; the most powerful telescopes on Earth cannot see the star.

But there seems to be some dissent about the findings.

Roberta Humphreys, an astronomy professor at the University of Minnesota, thinks the findings may be a bit overstated. She says the Pistol Star appears to be "comparable in luminosity and probably initial mass to Eta Carinae."

That's a star visible in the Southern hemisphere that's the most massive, luminous star in Earth's region of the Milky Way.

Humphreys isn't convinced from the new images that the Pistol Star is a single star.

"They don't have sufficient resolution to see if that's one star or two or three - and it could be at that distance," she said.

Hubble captured the images on Sept. 13 and 14. Figer and his colleagues were so excited by what they saw, they released the images Tuesday before they could publish their findings.

Researchers estimate the Pistol Star is 25,000 light-years from Earth, near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It's invisible to the eye because interstellar dust absorbs most of the light it gives off.

Figer suggested back in 1995 that the Pistol Star may have created the surrounding nebula by throwing off its layers.

Based on the new pictures, Figer said, "It's pretty clear this gas (of the nebula) came from an eruption from the star," that occurred 4,000 to 6,000 years ago.

The Pistol Star appears to be scheduled for a short, violent life. The star will "die" with a brilliant supernova in 1 to 3 million years. In comparison, our sun, burning slower and colder, is expected to last another 5 billion years.

With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.

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