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HONG KONG: White dwarf stars have been imaged moving in mass numbers for the first time, in an event astronomers are describing as an exodus. This new finding could reveal the secrets of dying stars.
Globular cluster 47 Tucanae, where the phenomenon is seen taking place, is approximately 120 light years in diameter, and the collection of stars lies roughly 16,700 light years from our own planet. The cluster of hundreds of thousands of stars, located in the constellation Tucana (The Toucan), is barely visible to the unaided eye under the dark skies of the Southern Hemisphere.
White dwarfs are the corpses of dead stars which were once about the same size as our own sun. They are just the size of planets, and extremely dim over wavelengths of visible light. However, the surfaces of these remnants of stars soon after they die are extremely hot, so they glow brightly in ultraviolet frequencies. Without fuel to continue glowing, these stellar remains cool quickly over time, causing the peak energy recorded from the object to change frequency. Be studying the wavelength of this peak emission, astronomers can determine the age of the object.
The Hubble Space Telescope was used to record the new images of around 3,000 white dwarfs which shows the movement of the stellar remains as they moved from the crowded core of the cluster to the less populated “suburbs” of 47 Tucanae. How far a collapsed star moves during these migrations is dependent on its mass.
