Hyperfast Star Was Booted from Milky Way

ScienceDaily ^ | 7/22/2010 | ScienceDaily

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

A hundred million years ago, a triple-star system was traveling through the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy when it made a life-changing misstep. The trio wandered too close to the galaxy's giant black hole, which captured one of the stars and hurled the other two out of the Milky Way. Adding to the stellar game of musical chairs, the two outbound stars merged to form a super-hot, blue star.

This story may seem like science fiction, but astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say it is the most likely scenario for a so-called hypervelocity star, known as HE 0437-5439, one of the fastest ever detected. It is blazing across space at a speed of 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) an hour, three times faster than our Sun's orbital velocity in the Milky Way. Hubble observations confirm that the stellar speedster hails from the Milky Way's core, settling some confusion over where it originally called home.

Most of the roughly 16 known hypervelocity stars, all discovered since 2005, are thought to be exiles from the heart of our galaxy. But this Hubble result is the first direct observation linking a high-flying star to a galactic center origin

[Calvin Locke]

Not familiar with them, so those lyrics didn't get stuck in my head reading the earlier comments, like GP did.

It helps that I saw GP way back in the 1980s. In Boston, fwiw.

[Las Vegas Dave]

bookmarked..

[Southack]

I don’t know...a simpler explanation would be an anti-matter ejection getting red-shifted to appear blue, rather than a 3 star trifecta merger ricochet shot out of a black hole.

[cripplecreek]

Its a red hypergiant that’s 4900 light years away. I don’t have any estimates on when its expected to go boom. Its kind of an odd star.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VY_Canis_Majoris

[TheOldLady]

At least it’s heading away from our galaxy and not toward it like the giant [anatomy term] that will get here by 2012 and destroy Earth.

[Eaker]

Ping

[Lurker]

Thanks.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks The Comedian.

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[KoRn]

Very interesting. I was reading about this ‘ejected’ star just recently. I’m just glad the thing didn’t come our way. It probably would have went through our Solar System like a hot knife through butter!

Likely the only scenario where we would have wished for something ‘little’ like a comet. lol

[SunkenCiv]

Among other things, this topic would be perfect for the Halton Arp ping list, which thankfully never seemed like a good idea to me. ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks The Comedian.

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Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks The Comedian.

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[MissouriConservative]

“Tweaker stars. Send in the galactic SWAT team.”

Can’t do that, they’d just shoot the dog star.

[rdl6989]

"I'll get that sumbich. What we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law!"

That cracked me up.

[dljordan]

“Can’t do that, they’d just shoot the dog star”

LOL!