Eta Carinae is one of the best - study and most bewitching binary organization in our galaxy . situated 7,500 light - years away in the Carina Nebula , it has two massive stars ( 100 times and 30 times the mickle of the Sun ) with a combine brightness level 5 million times that of the Sun , both of which eject dense starring flatus out into space . It ’s shroud in the Homunculus Nebula , a cloud of dust ejected during a violent outburst get laid as the Great Eruption , when the system became the third hopeful star in the dark sky , before fading back down .
Researchers report in two papers in Astronomy & Astrophysics ( hereandhere ) how the scheme also generates some of the most brawny light in the world : XTC - ray and gamma rays . The researchers disclose that Eta Carinae is a reservoir of gamma rays some 100 billion metre more than the energy of visible sparkle , making it a new reference of high - energy cosmic gamma radiation .
late observations had shew that Eta Carinae can produce gamma - ray of light but the newfangled observations , from the gamma - ray lookout station theHigh Energy Stereoscopic System(H.E.S.S. ) , show expelling 40 time more up-and-coming than the previous detections .
The causa of the gamma rays is not the lead themselves , it ’s their hint . Both stars liberate dense supersonic stream of shoot down particles into space , with some moving up to 1 percentage of the speed of ignitor . The two stars also orbit each other every 5.5 years in very bizarre elliptical orbits . At their closest glide path , they are or so the distance from our Sun to Mars . At their furthest , they are as far as Uranus is from the Sun .
These apparent movement make the winds to periodically bang into each other with great energy . The material in the winds is heated to unbelievable temperature , releasing X - rays and da Gamma shaft of light . Some of these particle are accelerated by brawny magnetic fields and are thrown into the galaxy as cosmic ray . This evidence makes the binary arrangement a new kind of source for very high - energy cosmic gamma actinotherapy .
“ The analysis of the Vasco da Gamma radiation mensuration have by H.E.S.S. and the satellites show that the radiation sickness can best be represent as the product of rapidly accelerated nuclear nuclei , ” co - writer Ruslan Konno said in astatement . “ This would make the shock regions of colliding astral winds a unexampled type of natural particle accelerator for cosmic rays . ”
