TIC 290061484 contains a pair of stars that orbit each other every 1.8 days, and a third star that orbits the pair in just 25 days. This discovery breaks the record for the shortest outer orbital period for a system of this kind. Taurus Lambda In 1956, a third star orbited the inner pair in 33 days.
This artist's concept shows how closely the three stars in the TIC 290061484 system orbit each other. If they were placed at the center of our solar system, the orbits of all the stars would be contained in a smaller space than the orbit of Mercury around the sun. The sizes of the triplet stars and the sun are also to scale. Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Double stars are ubiquitous in the Milky Way, and more than half of the Sun-like stars have a companion star, often more than one.
In fact, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun. Alpha Centauri Triple System.
The system is fairly broad and all three components are resolved visually. The inner binary consisting of Alpha Centauri A and B has an orbital period of almost 80 years, but Proxima takes about 550,000 years to orbit its common center of mass.
Triple star systems cover a huge range of physical parameters, star types, and orbital configurations.
Long-period ones like Alpha Centauri represent one end of the spectrum where interactions between individual components occur on time scales so vast that human observers are unlikely to witness exciting events. .
In contrast, compact short-period systems that exist at the other end of the triple star spectrum can often exhibit a large number of detectable dynamical interactions that are very dramatic.
Naturally, the shorter the outer period, the stronger the interactions between the individual components. Therefore, the most interesting systems are usually those with outer orbital periods of less than 1,000 days (commonly referred to as compact hierarchical triples).
Although these discoveries have greatly advanced our current knowledge of compact hierarchical triples, one thing has not changed since the 1950s.
For more than 68 years, Lambda Taurus has reigned supreme as the compact hierarchical triple with the shortest outer period of 33.02 days.
Now, thanks to NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission, astronomers were able to discover and confirm TIC 290061484. This TIC 290061484 has a circumferential period of just 24.5 days and a circumferential period of 24.5 days, which is nearly nine days shorter. Lambda Tauri's.
TIC 290061484, also known as Gaia 2169382208774963072, is located 1,519 parsecs (4,954 light years) away in the constellation Cygnus.
“Thanks to the compact edge-on configuration of this system, we can measure the orbit, mass, size, and temperature of stars,” said Dr. Veselin Kostov, an astronomer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the SETI Institute.
“Then we can study how the system formed and predict how it will evolve.”
PanSTARRS image centered on the TIC 290061492 system. Image credit: Kostov others., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad7368.
Kostov and his colleagues used machine learning to filter vast amounts of starlight data from TESS to identify patterns of dimming that reveal eclipses.
A small team of citizen scientists then did further filtering based on their years of experience and informal training to find particularly interesting cases.
These amateur astronomers came together as participants in an online citizen science project called Planet Hunters, which was active from 2010 to 2013.
The volunteers then teamed up with professional astronomers to launch a new collaboration called the Visual Survey Group, which has been active for more than a decade.
“We're primarily looking for evidence of compact multi-star systems, unusual pulsating stars in binary systems, and strange objects,” said Saul Rappaport, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Such systems are rare and would be interesting to identify, but they may be more common than current counts suggest.”
“There may be many more spots in our galaxy waiting to be discovered.”
The stars in the TIC 290061484 system orbit in nearly the same plane, so they are thought to be very stable despite their dense configuration.
The gravity of each star does not affect the other stars as much as it would if their orbits were tilted in different directions.
“But while its orbit will probably remain stable for millions of years, no one lives here,” Professor Rappaport says.
“We think these stars formed together during the same growth process, which would have prevented planets from forming very close together around any of the stars. ”
“An exception could be a distant planet that orbits three stars as if they were one.”
“The stars inside expand as they age and eventually merge, causing a supernova explosion about 20 to 40 million years later.”
Meanwhile, astronomers are looking for triple stars with even shorter orbits.
“We don't know much about many of the stars at the center of our galaxy, except for the brightest stars,” said Dr. Brian Powell, a data scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
“High-resolution views from NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help measure normally blurred light from stars, providing the best-ever look at the nature of the Milky Way's star systems. You will be able to do it.”
This finding is reported in the following article: paper in astrophysical journal.
_____
VB Kostov others. 2024. TIC 290061484: Triple eclipse system with shortest known outer period of 24.5 days. APJ 974, 25; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad7368
Source: www.sci.news
