Within 10,000 light-years lies the constellation Carina, which contains one of the most impressive and mysterious star systems we know. Two massive stars, known as Eta Carinae have erupted twice in the 19th century for reasons astronomers still do not understand. And now, astronomers from the 225th meetings of the American Astronomical Society weighed in on the system with new findings, which include 3D printed models that show never-before-seen features of the interactions between the two stars.
The primary star of the system has about 90 times the mass of the Sun, and outshines it by five million times, while the properties of the smaller star are still hotly contested to this day. Both starts produce powerful gaseous outflows known as stellar winds. These winds cover the stars making them impossible to observe directly but the gas is hot and dense enough to emit observable X-rays.
The X-ray output brightens as the two stars move as close together as Mars is from our Sun, but then drop suddenly as the smaller star quickly moves around the primary, larger star.
A research team has developed a 3D simulation after examining eleven years worth of data from multiple NASA satellites and ground-based telescopes. According to the new model, the winds from each star have different properties with the wind from the primary star being slow, blowing at one million miles per hour while the hotter companion star's winds are as much as six times faster.
"Using a commercial 3-D printer ... we have found a way to 3-D print the output from our computer simulations of Eta Car," researcher from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Thomas Madura says. "And as far as we are aware these are the world's first 3-D prints of a supercomputer simulation of a complex astrophysical system."
The model can be separated into two sections based on the wind of each star. And when the model is sliced in half, it reveals a cavity carved by the companion star's wind into the primary star's wind.
"As a result of doing this 3-D printing work, we actually discovered these finger-like protrusions that extend radially out of the spiral wind-wind collision region," Madura says. "These are features that we didn't even really know existed" prior to this. They're likely the result of physical instabilities that arise when the fast wind collides with the slower wind, which is essentially a wall of gas."
As the stars lose mass, the chances of the stars ending their lives as a supernova increases although, at least for now, there is nothing to suggest that either will suffer that fate any time soon.
