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We often think that stars do not move much, but in some galaxies, it's far from being a universal truth. New observations by NASA's powerful Chandra X-Ray observatory reveal that some stars are regularly pulled out of their own host galaxies and returned to space.
The researchers spotted dozens of pairs of binary stars that had been, for lack of a better term, forced out from their homes after one of the two stars explodes into a supernova.
The NASA telescope observed several pairs of binary stars, two stars in orbit in the heart of a star system, projected away from their home by the force of one of the stars exploding.
When one of the stars explodes and then collapses to become a dense neutron star, the asymmetric force of this action can cause the star to come out of its original position. As the neutron star moves away quickly, its gravity pulls on its binary partner, sending the two stars on a path out of their own original galaxies.
"It's like a guest who is asked to leave a party with a rowdy friend," said Xiangyu Jin, lead author of the research, in a statement. "The star companion in this situation is dragged out of the galaxy simply because it is in orbit with the star that has become supernova."
The companion can not help but follow the lead and the team of researchers using Chandra's data has already spotted some thirty pairs of stars from the Fornax galaxy group who seem to be fleeing home because of this phenomenon.
In the future, researchers hope to use additional Chandra data to identify other expelled star pairs that are simply too dark to be identified using existing data. Longer observation campaigns could change that, revealing new binary pairs thrown into space.
Source of Image: NASA / CXC / Nanjing University / X. Jin et al.
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