Scientists sketch aged star system using over a century of observations – Space Daily

Astronomers have painted their best picture yet of an RV Tauri variable, a rare type of stellar binary where two stars – one approaching the end of its life – orbit within a sprawling disk of dust. Their 130-year dataset spans the widest range of light yet collected for one of these systems, from radio to X-rays.
“There are only about 300 known RV Tauri variables in the Milky Way galaxy,” said Laura Vega, a recent doctoral recipient at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “We focused our…

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