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Transcript
Theoretical Modeling of Massive Stars Mr. Russell University of Delaware Department of Physics and Astronomy Massive Stars 20-100 times the Sun’s mass • Sun has 300,000 Earths in it • Massive star has 6,000,000-30,000,000 Earths: Absolutely Huge! Extremely Bright • Blinding if placed next to Sun Short Lifetime-millions of years • Sun lives 10 billion years • 10,000 Massive Stars live and die in Sun’s lifetime Produce/distribute almost all elements past H and He in supernova Massive Stars Light from all galaxies is dominated by massive stars Can only resolve massive stars in close galaxies, not small stars • All individual stars seen in Whirlpool galaxy are massive stars Can only see light from massive stars in distant galaxies • All small stars are outshined so light from galaxies shown in Hubble UltraDeep Field is all from massive stars Whirlpool Galaxy (NASA) Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (NASA) Why Make Models? Can’t make a star in the laboratory Can’t travel to them Can observe light from stars Can apply physical laws and concepts to learn about stars • use computer models to simulate properties of stars • match model results to observational data Eta Carinae Thought to be most massive star(s) in our Milky Way Galaxy 10 M_sun Bipolar Nebula enshrouds star(s) from 1840’s “Giant Eruption” Very close so lots of data Data predicts system is actually a binary system with one star ~90 M_sun and the other ~30 M_sun Think it is in last stages of life before big star undergoes a supernova X-Rays of Eta Carinae High energy X-rays penetrate nebula allowing light directly from star(s) to be detected Colleague made a model to simulate the two stars I analyzed the results to see how the X-ray brightness of the star(s) changed over time Excellent comparison between model and observation: suggests Eta Carinae is indeed a binary system
