Astronomers have created a 3D model of one of the largest stars in the Milky Way. They're hoping to watch it as it dies. by AndyTomaswick
Enter the team from UA. They picked VY Canis Majoris as an excellent stand-in for the type of red hypergiants they were interested in learning more about. The star itself is massive, ranging from 10,000 AU to 15,000 AU in size, meaning it would reach 10,000 to 15,000 times farther out than the Earth is from the Sun today. And it is only 3,009 light-years away from Earth as it is. This makes VY Canis Majoris, which resides in the southern constellation Canis Major, fascinating to observers.
Its sheer size and proximity to our solar system make it an excellent observational candidate. With good observational data, astronomers can see the breathtaking complexity of what the star’s surface actually looks like. One of the fundamental processes in a star’s death is mass loss. Typically, this happens when gas and dust are blown evenly out of the star’s photosphere. However, on VY Canis Majoris, there are massive features that are similar to Earth’s coronal arcs but a billion times more massive.Credit – Wikipedia user Svartkell
The UA researchers used time on ALMA to collect radio signals of the material that is blasted into space as part of these eruptions. That material, including sulfur dioxide, silicon dioxide, and sodium chloride, would allow them to detect the speed at which it moves, rather than just the static presence of other ejecta, such as dust. To do so, they had to align all 48 dishes of ALMA and collect over a terabyte of data to get the correct information.
Processing all that collected data can be pretty challenging, and they are still working on some of it. Still, they had enough so far to present their findings to the American Astronomical Society in mid-June. When they have even more data, they’ll be able to describe an even better model of what one of the largest stars in the galaxy looks like.
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