Scientists find alien star driven by unknown force

The magnetic force driving our Sun can be seen in the pattern of sunspots that appear on its surface, and new research has identified a distant star with a much different sunspot pattern, thought to indicate a much different magnetic field driving that star.

Stars are radiant spheres of gas that through atomic operations discharge energy that is released as light and heat. Inside a star are charged particles that whirl around and in so doing generate a magnetic field that can break open onto the exterior of the star as sunspots. Sunspots are actually cool areas brought on by the powerful magnetic fields where the circulation of heat is slowed.

On the Sun, the sunspots are observed in a strip around the equator, but now researchers have detected a large, faraway star where sunspots are situated close to the poles, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature.

“What we can observe on the star is that it has a large sunspot at its north pole,” study author Heidi Korhonen, an astrophysicist at the University of Copenhagen, said in a news release. “We cannot see the south pole, but we can see sunspots at latitudes near the poles and these sunspots are not there at the same time, they are seen alternately on the northern and southern hemispheres. This asymmetry of sunspots indicates that the star’s magnetic field is formed in a different way than the way it happens in the Sun.”

An alien star

The unique star is located 180 light years away in the constellation Andromeda. Because it is too far away to observe the details on the exterior, the star was examined by gathering images from multiple telescopes all at the same time. While the technique has been used for decades with radio telescopes, recent advances have made it possible to observe stars the visible and near-infrared light.

“Our new measurements confirm that there are large sunspots at the poles. We see dark sunspots on the northern visible pole, while the observations reveal that the lower latitudes are areas with sunspots that do not last, but appear and disappear again with an asymmetrical distribution on the surface of the star and this was surprising,” Korhonen said.

The Danish astrophysicist noted that the unique star is part of a binary pair, two stars orbiting each other. Stars in binary pairs spin much faster than solo stars and the star identified in the study rotates 20 times faster than our Sun.

“It is the rapid rotation that creates a different and very strong magnetic field. The strong magnetic field gives a more complicated dynamo effect that resembles what you see at the stage where a new star is being created. Here we are seeing the same effect in an old active star that is in its final stage,” Korhonen said.

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Image credit: NASA

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