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From black holes that destroy stars to exploding comets, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has spotted its fair share of surprises since it began searching the galaxy for exoplanets in 2018. But the star’s light source which mysteriously lit and dimmed some 1,900 lights -years can surpass all of these discoveries for its sci-fi grandeur.
The source, named TIC 168789840, is a six-star system. That alone makes it a rarity, but what makes this sextuplet even more remarkable is that it consists of three pairs of binary stars: three different stellar couplets revolving around three different centers of mass, but the remaining trio gravitationally linked to each other and making circles. the galactic center as a single star system. Although a handful of other six-star systems have been discovered, this one is unique: it is the first in which the stars of each of these three pairs pass in front of and behind the other, eclipsing the other member. of his stellar dance troupe. , at least from the line of sight of our space telescope.
In other words, scientists have found a sixfold star system eclipsing sixfold. The discovery, posted online this month, has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.
Exoplanets within the star cluster have yet to be confirmed, but if you lived in a world inside, the night sky would be something special, said Tamás Borkovits, astronomer at the Observatory. Baja Astronomical in Hungary and co-author. All of the inhabitants of these worlds “could see two suns, just like Luke Skywalker on Tatooine,” said Dr. Borkovits, along with four other very bright stars dancing around the sky.
But only one of the pairs could have planets. Two of the binaries in the system rotate very close to each other, forming their own quadruple subsystem. All the planets there would likely be ejected or swallowed up by one of the four stars. The third binary is further away, orbiting the other two once every 2,000 years or so, making it a possible exoplanetary refuge.
Exotic stellar collections like this don’t just look cool. They are refining and challenging our understanding of how multiple star systems form, said Patricia Cruz, an astrophysicist at the Madrid Center for Astrobiology who was not involved in the work.
The depth and duration of TIC 168789840 eclipses allows astronomers to determine the dimensions, masses and relative temperatures of its stars – vital information that can be connected to models of star formation. But even with these clues, the origin of this swirling six-star system will remain a puzzle until we find others like it.
“The system exists against all odds,” said Brian Powell, a data scientist at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Archives Research Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and lead author of the study.
NASA’s TESS satellite searches for exoplanets by looking for temporary dips in a star’s light, caused by a planet orbiting in front of it from our perspective. But, said Dr Cruz, scientists originally used the same principle of blocking light with other telescopes to spy on stars obscuring other stars.
Using this concept, Dr Powell, together with Veselin Kostov, an astrophysicist at the SETI Institute, designed a neural network that could identify eclipsing binary stars using TESS data.
The neural network has studied an archive of nearly 80 million records of changes in light intensity, far more than humans alone could handle. “What machine learning can do is take this insoluble data set and turn it into something a human can work with,” said Powell. He found an overabundance of multiple star systems, including the superlative TIC 168789840 last March.
At the end of last year, the data was passed on to professional and amateur “hawk-eyed and very enthusiastic” astronomers around the world, Dr Borkovits said. Their efforts confirmed that TIC 168789840 was a six-fold system and helped clarify the characteristics, orbital dimensions, and trajectories of its stars.
Andrei Tokovinin, astronomer at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in La Serena, Chile, and co-author of the study, suggests an explanation for the birth of the system: Three stars formed in a vast cloud of gas, all orbiting each other the others in a three-star system. They later encountered a dense cluster of gas from the same cloud. This encounter led to the formation of records around the original trio of stars, ultimately giving each of them smaller companions.
Trying to unravel its origins is a worthwhile endeavor. But for Mr. Powell, “working with the most interesting data in the universe” to simply find this strange sextuplet is reward enough.
“The mere fact that there is really upsets my mind,” he says. “I would love to be in a spaceship, park next to this thing and see it in person.”
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