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NASA has stated that its observations are the clearest among the "hunted" and "banned" stars of their galaxies. The incredible photo in question was taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, a powerful space telescope launched in 1999. The photo below shows the host galaxies NGC 1399 and NGC 1404, represented by two bright spots of purple light, placed in a dark background. of space. However, NASA could not identify which of the smaller light spots are binary stars ejected.
A binary star system is a system in which a smaller star is enclosed in the orbit of a larger ball of burning gas and both can look like our Sun or be something of completely different and exotic.
In this scenario, NASA examines a neutron star, which formed when its nucleus collapsed and exploded into a spectacular supernova.
The force of the explosion then recoiled enough to send the neutron star and its smaller companion to fly out of the Fornax cluster – the second largest group of galaxies after the Virgin.
Astronomer Xiangyu Jin of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, led a study on NASA Chandra's observations.
The space expert said, "It's like a guest who has been invited to leave a party with a rowdy friend.
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"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."
How did the Chandra Telescope locate these ejected stars tens of millions of light-years away from Earth?
If the smallest star is close enough to its biggest partner, NASA explained that any star would fall in a disc of all kinds around the big star.
The disk of stellar material will then move "rapidly" as it approaches the neutron star because of the immense gravity.
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As the material moves faster and faster, the resulting friction warms the gaseous disc to "tens of millions of degrees".
Everything that happens at these temperatures will begin to shine in X-ray light, which can then be picked up by Chandra.
This is an incredible feat, considering that the Fornax cluster is some 60 million light years away from us.
Astronomers who analyzed Chandra's data examined the datasets collected between 1999 and 2015.
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The researchers then combined x-ray snapshots and optical observations to create a "census of X-ray sources" extending up to 600,000 light-years from the heart of Fornax.
At least 30 X-ray sources in the census are probably binary stars ejected from their own galaxies.
The co-author of the study, Meicun Hou, of Nanjing University in China, said: "Rather than being attached to a particular galaxy, these pairs of stars exist now in the space between the galaxies, or are leaving their galaxy of origin. "
And the co-author of Nanjing University, Zhenlin Zhu, said: "It's like the end of a party, where attendees attend in different directions and where only the hosts are left.
"In the case of Fornax, the extreme case is that the original galaxies do not really exist anymore."
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