Comments on: (cough hack) Star blows smoke (wheeze cough)

By: SCR

SCR — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 20:31:33 +0000

“# Nigel Depledgeon 07 Aug 2007 at 5:52 am
Marzia – or knowing a teeny bit of Latin.”

SCR – Or Greek for the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc …

Or Arabic for most of the best star names – albeit really corrupted “Chinese whispers” style Arabic. (My fave star names -Zubenelgenubi (Arabic) for Alpha Libae, Zubeneschmali (Arabic) for Beta Librae, Arkushanangarushashutu (Babylonian ) for Delta Cancris, Shurnarkabtishashiltanu (also Babylonian) for Beta Tauri & Shurnarkabtishashutu (again Babylonian) for Zeta Tauri …

Nigel Depledgeon again : “Nice blog entry, Phil. That really shows the power of modern scientific instruments. Isnâ€™t human ingenuity a wonderful thing?”

SCR – Yup! I’ll second that.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:52:02 +0000

Marzia – or knowing a teeny bit of Latin.

Nice blog entry, Phil. That really shows the power of modern scientific instruments. Isn’t human ingenuity a wonderful thing?

By: Marzia

Marzia — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:15:09 +0000

Speaking Italian makes things easier, on pronouncing star’s names…;-)

By: csrster

csrster — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:07:38 +0000

Astrophysics isn’t as much fun as it used to be. In the old days you had to do all this incredible detective work from a couple of grotty spectra in a desparate attempt to come up with a physical model to explain some tiny little fluctuation in some little pinprick of light. But nowadays with all these giant telescopes with their fancy adaptive optics and digital image reconstruction some bugger actually goes and _takes a picture_ of what’s happening! Isn’t that just cheating?

By: Peter Hornby

Peter Hornby — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 05:53:21 +0000

It’s an interesting coincidence that R Coronae Borealis, the star after which this small group of variables is named, is undergoing one of these episodes right now, fpr the first time since 2003. The first signs of the dust puff were noticed by amateurs in early July, as the star started to fade from its normal 6th magnitude (barely visible to the naked eye under good conditions). Tonight, it’s around 11th magnitude, so you’ll need a 3-4″ telescope to see it. A drop of five magnitudes means that the dust cloud is absorbing 99% of the light of the star. This is in no way record-breaking for R CrB, as it’s familiarly known. On occasions, it’s faded to 15th magnitude, where you’d need a 12-14″ telescope to see it. At 15th magnitude, the cloud is absorbing 99.98% of the star’s light.

The American Association of Variable Star Observers, the world’s leading group of amateur variable star observers, has a bulletin on the fading at http://www.aavso.org/publications/specialnotice/54.shtml

By: Paracelsus

Paracelsus — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:48:35 +0000

Why are these stars belching vast amounts of matter in the first place? How much of the star’s mass is actually lost in each eruption, and how long can a star keep doing this before it loses its outer layer entirely?

Does this kind of thing happen only to very large red giants, or will our sun go through a ‘belching’ phase when it becomes a red giant?

By: Bill Bones

Bill Bones — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:28:22 +0000

Wowl, of that isn’t absolutely cool… dust.