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Astronomers were able to see changes on the surface of a distant star that occur due to the circulation of heat inside it.
For the first time, scientists have seen bubbles of hot plasma on the surface of another star, not just the Sun. Surface changes were recorded in incredible detail in the star R Goldfish. It is located at a distance of 180 light years from us and is 350 times larger than the Sun. Now the star is going through the last stage of his life. The study was published in the journal Nature ScienceAlert.
For the first time, scientists observed changes on the surface of another star, not just the Sun, with the help of the powerful ground-based ALMA telescope. The changes that scientists managed to record on the star R Golden Fish are huge bubbles of plasma, each of which is 75 times larger than the Sun in size. According to scientists, for the first time they observed in incredible detail the process of convection that leads to the appearance of plasma bubbles on another star
R Golden Fish is a red giant variable star. This means that she is in the last stage of her life, when there has been a significant increase in her size. In a few billion years, the Sun will also become a red giant.
Convection processes occur in stars, when the heat produced in the core promotes the movement of hot plasma closer to the surface, and structures in the form of bubbles are formed. These are the so-called convection cells. They can also be seen on the Sun, but they mostly have a size of no more than 1000 km and exist for a long time.
Although convection creates a highly visible grain structure on the surface of the Sun, it is very difficult to see in other stars. Scientists not only saw this for the first time, but also for the first time were able to measure the speed of movement of plasma bubbles.
The scientists found that the plasma bubbles on R Goldfish have a cycle of about a month, much faster than expected given knowledge of the same processes on the Sun. At the same time, it is not yet known why these bubbles are so huge. Perhaps similar processes are connected with the fact that the star became a red giant. Scientists assume that as stars age, convection processes may change.
Astronomers still know very little about red giants, and such changes on their surface may be commonplace.
