Spectacular bullet star sowing seeds of possible life spotted

NASAs Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope has spotted a surprisingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space at supersonic speeds, and spewing seeds of possible life.

Washington, Aug 16 : NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope has spotted a surprisingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space at supersonic speeds, and spewing seeds of possible life.

The star, named Mira after the Latin word for "wonderful", has been a favourite of astronomers for approximately 400 years. It is a fast-moving, older red giant that is shedding massive amounts of surface material.

The Galaxy Explorer scanned the popular star during its ongoing survey of the entire sky in ultraviolet light.

Astronomers then noticed what looked like a comet with a gargantuan tail. They found material blowing off Mira forming a wake 13 light-years long, or about 20,000 times the average distance of Pluto from the Sun.

"I was shocked when I first saw this completely unexpected, humongous tail trailing behind a well-known star. It was amazing how Mira's tail echoed on vast, interstellar scales the familiar phenomena of a jet's contrail or a speedboat's turbulent wake," said Christopher Martin of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

Martin said Mira's tail offers a unique opportunity to study how stars like our Sun die and ultimately seed new solar systems.

"As Mira hurtles along, its tail sheds carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed to form new stars, planets and possibly even life. This tail material, visible for the first time, has been released during the past 30,000 years," Marin said in his study in Nature.

"This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved. We hope to be able to read Mira's tail like a ticker tape to learn about the star's life," added co-author Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena. Seibert said, billions of years ago, Mira was similar to our Sun. Over time, it began to swell into what is called a variable red giant -- a pulsating, puffed-up star that periodically grows bright enough to see with the naked eye.

He said Mira would eventually eject all its remaining gas into space, forming a colourful shell called a planetary nebula. The nebula will fade with time, leaving only the burnt-out core of the original star, which will then be called a white dwarf.

He said compared to other red giants, Mira is also travelling unusually fast, possibly due to gravitational boosts from other passing stars.

It is now plowing along at 291,000 miles per hour and racing along with it is a small, distant companion thought to be a white dwarf, he said.

The pair, also known as Mira A (the red giant) and Mira B, orbit slowly around each other as they travel together in the constellation Cetus, 350 light-years from Earth, the study added.

Martin further said they could spot Mira's tail only with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, because it glows with ultraviolet light.

ANI