美国宇航局发现了罕见的双星系统
Scientists used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation’s Karl F. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to spot the double, or binary, star system. The system is located in Terzan 5, a dense cluster of stars about 20,000 light-years from Earth.
科学家们利用美国宇航局钱德拉X射线天文台,和美国国家科学基金会卡尔F詹斯基超大阵列(VLA)发现了这颗双星或双星系统。该系统位于泰山5号,一个密集的星团,距离地球约20000光年。
A light-year, which measures distance in space, equals about 6 trillion miles.
一光年是测量空间距离的单位,相当于6万亿英里。
NASA has compared the system to a cosmic “Jekyll and Hyde.”
美国宇航局将这个系统比作宇宙中的“杰基尔和海德”。
“Using nearly a decade and a half worth of Chandra data, researchers noticed that a stellar duo behaved like one type of object before switching its identity, and then returning to its original state after a few years,” NASA said in a statement. “This is a rare example of a star system changing its behavior in this way.”
美国航天局在一份声明中说:“利用钱德拉近15年的数据,研究人员注意到一对恒星在转换身份前表现得像一种物体,几年后又回到原来的状态。”。“这是一个罕见的恒星系统以这种方式改变其行为的例子。”
The double-star system, Terzan 5 CX1, consists of a neutron star in close orbit around a star similar to the Sun, which possesses less mass, according to NASA.
美国航天局称,双星系统Terzan 5 CX1由一颗中子星组成,它围绕着一颗类似太阳、但质量较小的恒星运行。
The rare double star system is just the latest in recent cosmic discoveries. In a separate project, a 77-year-old amateur astronomer helped discover a rare galaxy double nucleus.
罕见的双星系统只是最近宇宙发现的最新发现。在另一个项目中,一位77岁的业余天文学家帮助发现了一个罕见的星系双核。
NASA also recently announced that a 17-year-old summer intern made an incredible planet discovery.
美国宇航局最近还宣布,一名17岁的暑期实习生发现了一颗令人难以置信的行星。