Red supergiants are stars more massive than 9 times the mass of the Sun, a late stage of stellar evolution in which the stars’ atmospheres become expansive, while lowering in density. Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, is about 12 times as massive as the Sun, but its diameter is 700 times larger. Its mass was once thought to be 15 times that of the Sun, with three solar masses of material being shed during its lifetime. If located in our Solar System, its outer edges would reach somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Now we have word that scientists using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at Paranal Observatory in Chile have been able to map the surface of this star, and to measure the motion of its surface material. What we get out of all this is the best image of the surface and atmosphere of any star other than our own.
Image: VLTI reconstructed view of the surface of Antares. Credit: ESO.
Lead author Keiichi Ohnaka and colleagues were able to create a two-dimensional velocity map of Antares’ atmosphere, using three of the VLTI’s auxiliary telescopes — these are 1.8 meter instruments that feed the interferometer and can be moved from place to place on the VLT platform. The VLTI can combine the light of four different telescopes, using either its 8.2 meter ‘unit’ instruments or the smaller auxiliary telescopes. In this case, three of the auxiliaries were complemented by AMBER, a near-infrared spectro-interferometric instrument.
With the help of the latter, the team was able to make separate images of the surface of Antares over a small range of infrared wavelengths. The ensuing map of the relative speed of atmospheric gases across the Antares disk grew out of calculations revealing the speed differential between gas at different positions on the star, and the average speed of gas over the entire star.
We’d like to know more about how supergiants like Antares lose mass as they enter their final stages. The paper reveals that the distribution of turbulent low-density gas was unexpectedly complex. Its presence much further from the star than predicted could not be explained by convection, which involves the transfer of energy from the core to the outer atmosphere of many stars — the extended atmosphere is much larger than convection models can produce.
From the paper:
Since convection alone cannot explain the density and extension of the atmosphere, some yet-to-be identified process should be in operation to make the atmosphere extended and give rise to the turbulent motions and also perhaps the mass loss. Given that we did not detect a systematic outflow within 1.7 stellar radii, the substantial acceleration of mass loss should take place beyond this radius. The next challenge remains to identify the driving mechanism responsible for the observed turbulent motions.
Thus we move toward applying these techniques to different types of star, now that we have demonstrated the ability to study stellar surfaces and atmospheres in such detail.
And if you’re looking for an Antares reference in science fiction, it would be to the classic Alfred Bester tale The Stars My Destination, in which protagonist Gully Foyle ‘jaunts’ (teleports) into the system (one of many in which he pops up), to find the star “…encircled by two hundred and fifty planetoids of the size of Mercury, of the climate of Eden.” Work that out if you can. And if you haven’t read Bester yet, this one needs to be at the top of the reading stack.
Today’s paper is Ohnaka et al., “Vigorous atmospheric motion in the red supergiant star Antares,” Nature 548 (17 August 2017), 310-312 (abstract).
Nitpicking: Antares upper photospheric density is comparable to that in low Earth orbit. Not much of a “surface” in my books.
‘The Stars My Destination’ was also published under the name, ‘Tiger Tiger’. Second hand book store lovers might see it on a shelf as that.
Yes, I believe this was the title in the British edition.
I think the space artists may need to rethink their depictions of red giant stars if this is in any way typical. I’m rather delighted that such stars do not look as uniform on their “surfaces” as we thought.
Let’s see if I recall this all right.
Gully Foyle is my name
Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars, my destination.
I have to wonder about this – forgive me – stellar achievement! And seriously what is to be made of the brighter masses showing diagonally across the face of the star, I wonder? Perhaps we are looking down the length of very large prominences that happen to be pointed our direction?
I also want to ask the smarter people here about the 1.8M scopes that assist in this type of work. More particularly, what is to be gained by moving these instruments about? Surely not to get a different angle of view in the manner of parallax?
Astronomy at this level is so much more than viewing through a Celestron.
Actually, yes, it’s something like parallax, namely ‘angular resolution’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution
Here’s the source of my amazement: I’m familiar with the parallax gained from viewing distant objects from opposite points along the orbit of Earth. And, I know that this is one way to measure distance to starts, trig being reliable. And that this works mostly for relatively close objects.
But that’s a baseline of more than 180M miles or so, and it only works for nearby starts where the parallax is large enough, compared to the distance to the object.
In this case we are talking about moving sub-2 meter instruments- what? 100′ at the most? 30 meters or so, I guess, not knowing the layout.
That’s the part that has me confused.
It’s like having a 30 m telescope. You obtain a bigger resolution. Look at this picture: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Rsuzjv3kZvI/UhSqzlh7BAI/AAAAAAAAAC8/gIvewBAvkYs/s1600/image002.png If you have a bigger eye, you have more retinal cells for every degree of image.
Thanks…now I see my error, not realizing that the smaller scopes were being used as they were. Thanks again…
Compared to the ALMA view of Betelgeuse, Antares looks like it has a lot more variation across its surface. Is that an artefact of the resolution of ALMA or is the surface of Antares actually more varied than the surface of Betelgeuse? Also is the apparent banding in the Antares image real, or is it caused by having different resolution along different axes?
Just wondering if an intelligent space faring race could survive around this star by taking mass from its outer envelope. There should be huge amounts of hydrogen and heavier metals that are expelled.