They identified the oldest star in the Milky Way

Astronomers led by the University of Warwick have identified star the oldest of Milky Way which collects fragments of planetosimals in orbit.

This makes it one of the oldest discovered rocky and icy planetary systems in the galaxy.

Findings published this Saturday in Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Noticesconclude that the dim white dwarf, located 90 light years from Earth, as well as the remnants of its orbital planetary system, is more than 10 billion years old.

The fate of the majority starsincluding such as the Sun, should become a white dwarf, which star which has used up all its fuel and shed its outer layers and is now undergoing a process of compression and cooling. During this process, rotating planets will be destroyed, and in some cases destroyed, and their remnants will accumulate on the surface of the white dwarf.

For this study, a team of astronomers led by the University of Warwick modeled two unusual white dwarfs that were discovered by the European Space Agency’s GAIA space observatory. Both stars they are contaminated with planetary debris, and one of them turned out to be unusually blue, and the other the dullest red color found to date in the local galactic neighborhood; the team subjected both studies to further analysis.

Using spectroscopic and photometric data from the GAIA, the Dark Energy Survey, and the X-Shooter instrument at the European Southern Observatory to determine how long it takes to cool, astronomers have found that star ‘red’ WJ2147-4035 it is about 10.7 billion years old, of which 10.2 billion years it cooled as a white dwarf.

Spectroscopy involves the analysis of light from star at different wavelengths, which can detect when elements in a star’s atmosphere absorb light of different colors and help determine which elements are present and in what quantity. Analyzing the spectrum WJ2147-4035the team detected the presence of the metals sodium, lithium, potassium and carbon, a previously detected increase in starmaking it the oldest metal-polluted white dwarf ever discovered.

Second star ‘blue’ WDJ1922+0233 he’s just a little younger than WJ2147-4035 and was contaminated with planetary debris of the same composition as the Earth’s continental crust. The scientific team concluded that the color blue WDJ1922+0233despite the low surface temperature, is caused by an unusual mixed atmosphere of helium and hydrogen.

Remains found in an atmosphere with high gravity and almost pure helium star red WJ2147-4035 come from an ancient planetary system that has evolved star to a white dwarf, leading astronomers to conclude that it is the oldest planetary system around a white dwarf found on Earth. Milky Way.

“Earth is not unique, there are similar planetary bodies”

Lead author Abbigail Elmes, a PhD student in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick, said these stars contaminated with metals “show that the Earth is not unique, there are other planetary systems with planetary bodies similar to the Earth”, and emphasizes that “97% of all stars they will become white dwarfs, and they are so ubiquitous in the universe that it is very important to understand them, especially these extremely cool ones.”

“formed from stars The oldest stars in our galaxy, cool white dwarfs provide information about the formation and evolution of planetary systems around the oldest stars in the galaxy. Milky Way”, said Elmes, who stressed that they are finding “the oldest stellar remnants in Milky Way that are polluted by planets that once looked like Earth.”

The lead author of the study noted that “it’s amazing to think that this happened on a scale of ten billion years, and that these planets died long before the formation of the Earth.”

Astronomers can also use spectra star to determine how fast these metals sink into the core starwhich allowed them to look back in time and determine how abundant each of these metals was in the original planetary body.

” star red WJ2147-4035 is a mystery, since the accumulated planetary debris is very rich in lithium and potassium and is unlike anything known in our solar system. This is a very interesting white dwarf because its ultra-cold surface temperature, metal contaminants, its old age and the fact that it is magnetic make it extremely rare,” Elmes explained.

For his part, Professor Pierre-Emmanuel Tremblay from the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick pointed out that “when these old stars having formed over 10 billion years ago, the universe was less rich in metals than it is now, as metals are formed in evolved stars and giant stellar explosions.”

“The two observed white dwarfs offer an exciting window into the formation of planets in a metal-poor, gas-rich environment that was different from the conditions when the solar system formed.” (EuropePress)

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