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Special Stars - ANTARES in the constellaion
Scorpius |
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Description of
object:
Antares (alpha
Scorpii), the main star of the constellation Scorpio, is a "red supergiant" and
is located about 600 light years away from the solar system. Antares is a
physical double star. The companion - alpha Scorpii B - is a blue-white star
and is currently 2.6" away from Antares. The orbit period is about 900 years,
the distance between the two stars is about 550 AU.
Antares has a diameter of about 1 billion km (our sun
about 1.4 million km). If Antares is put in place of our Sun, the orbit of the
planet Mars would still be inside the star. The surface temperature is about
3.000 degrees Celsius, therefore the star shines in orange-red
colour. |
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Antares is a star at the end of its life, it is already beginning to
reject its outer layers of gas and form a planetary nebula. Antares belongs
together with the stars Betelgeuse in Orion and Eta Carinae to the "hottest
candidates" as the next supernova to explode in our galaxy.
Antares is
the first fixed star where it was possible to image the surface of the star
with VLTI in high resolution.
«
Credit: ESO -
http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1726a/
Our image shows to the right
of Antares the globular cluster Messier 4. Between Antares and Messier 4 is the
globular cluster NGC 6144. At the lower left edge of the image is the diffuse
H-II region LBN 1103. At the top of the image are dark nebulae and the blue
reflection nebulae IC 4604 and IC 4605
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All Images and all Content are © by Franz Hofmann
+ Wolfgang Paech |