Stellar News

The bubbling surface of massive giant stars causes their observable positions on the sky to wobble. An international team of astrophysicists has now performed detailed simulations of the gas motions in the atmospheric layers of these stars and compared these with high-quality data of the Perseus stellar cluster. They find that the surface structures could indeed account for a large part of the measurement uncertainty in the observations. more

Both in her research and her hobbies, Deepika Bollimpalli, is always in motion. more

Not only humans try to look younger than they really are – stars do, too. This is what an international team of astronomers investigates in their paper that was just published in Nature Astronomy. They propose that stars in stellar clusters gain their mass in two different ways: by “normal” disk accretion leading to rapid rotation – contributing to the red main sequence – or by mergers of binary stars, leading to slowly rotating stars that appear bluer and therefore younger. more

A new study led by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics shows that massive stars produce twice as much carbon when they have a binary partner. The scientists base this on new state-of-the-art computer simulations. Their findings are a small but important step towards better understanding the cosmic origin of the elements we are made of. more

Instead of following a musical career, MPA postdoc Tiara Battich is investigating the processes inside hot sub-dwarf stars
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Benard Nsamba receives prestigious fellowship to study stars and inspire Ugandan students more

Astronomers have made the rare sighting of two stars spiralling to their doom by spotting the tell-tale signs of a teardrop-shaped star. The tragic shape is caused by a massive nearby white dwarf distorting the star with its intense gravity, which will also be the catalyst for an eventual supernova that will consume both. more