Author: Matthew Taub / Source: Atlas Obscura
Eight thousand light-years from Earth, two stars are engaged in a cosmic dance that is generating winds of 7.5 million miles per hour and sending dust swirling in brilliant, crimson trails. The astronomers who discovered this star system have named it Apep, after the ancient Egyptian snake god and emissary of chaos. Based on the image and the science, it’s a fitting name.
The researchers, who published their findings today in the journal Nature Astronomy, first started tracking this unidentified, very bright object in 2012, and spent years pursuing a better view in order to classify it. After seeing it clearly for the first time using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, “I just gasped,” says Benjamin Pope, a NASA Sagan Fellow at New York University and one of the study’s authors. “Nothing looks like this.” He’s not exaggerating: If the astronomers’ measurements are correct, this is the first-known star system of its kind in the entire Milky Way.
It’s beautiful and, despite being incomprehensibly distant, could actually…The post See the Newly Found, Explosive Star System Named for an Egyptian Snake God appeared first on FeedBox.