Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Tammy Jones
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-5566)
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
(Phone: 410/338-4514)
RELEASE: 96-279
The disk formed from gas spun off the rapidly rotating "Be"
star. What causes the fast spin of "Be" stars has been a mystery
to astronomers. Now the Hubble telescope observations of Phi
Persei offer at least a partial explanation: The gas discarded
from a nearby swelling star strikes the companion off-center,
causing it to spin faster.
"The beefed-up 'Be' star has won a new lease on life, but
its ultimate fate will be determined by the corpse of its former
companion, which remains in orbit uncomfortably nearby," Gies
concludes. Phi Persei is 720 light-years away in the
constellation Perseus, visible in the autumn evening sky in the
northern hemisphere, just north of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. The
double-star system is visible as a fourth-magnitude star.
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EDITORS NOTE: A photo and caption are available via the World
Wide Web at
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/39.html and via links in
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html or
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html.