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Our Sun is obviously the most intense place of our Solar System, but it is really cold when compared to many other systems. Eta Carinae, for example, is a binary star system that is about 7500 light years from Earth, and is so incredibly extreme that when it sends cosmic rays into space , he manages to reach us here on Earth
by astronomers using NASA's NuSTAR space telescope, drawing a startling picture of Eta Carinae. The two-star system is a violent place, with its twin stars producing incredibly powerful stellar winds that spin one around the other.
The heart of Eta Carinae is its double stars one of which represents 30 times the mass of our Sun. while the other is 90 times the mass. These massive stars are orbiting at a very close distance, performing a full rotation every five and a half years. At their closest approach, the stars are only 140 million miles apart, which, according to NASA, is about the same distance as Mars.
Both stars constantly release charged particles at extremely high speeds. the wind of the star slamming into that of the smaller star, creating massive waves of energy that are blown into space. Part of this energy finds its way into our own solar system, and for a long time astronomers did not know exactly where it came from. Thanks to the tools provided by the NuSTAR telescope, the scientists were able to trace the source definitively.
"We have known for some time that the area around Eta Carinae is the source of energy emission in high-energy X-rays and gamma rays," said Fiona Harrison, senior research scientist for NuSTAR, in a statement. "But until NuSTAR is able to identify the radiation, show that it comes from the binary and study its properties in detail, the original was mysterious."
This "cosmic ray gun" as NASA calls it does not threaten us with the distance between the Earth and the volatile system, but tracking the source of various cosmic rays can help researchers to better understand the processes that continue to shape the galaxy around us.
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