Pages

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Imaging Stars

Up until several years ago, every star in the universe was a single point of light to us here on Earth, except of course the sun. That is still true for optical light, but other stars have been resolved using longer wavelengths for some time using interferometry. Most recently a collaboration of French, Belgian, and American astronomers has published an image using inferred light of one of the largest stars in our corner of the Milky Way - Betelgeuse. Here's what it looks like:
Aside from the obvious interest in getting pictures of other stars, this image also presents evidence of strong convective cells in red giants, which ties in to my own research on convective processes in stellar interiors.

2 comments:

To add a link to text:
<a href="URL">Text</a>