STARS ESCAPE FROM ASTRONOMICAL ZOO

The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) site has run several discussions of the "variable star" V838 Monocerotis. Today they have another one.

They include comments like, "V838 Mon may be a totally new addition to the astronomical zoo."

I object to this "new" characterization. This zoo animal disproves standard fusion models. In fact this star (together with several others) simply demonstrates stellar evolution wholly NOT in keeping with thermonuclear stellar theory. To paraphrase my web page:

FG Sagittae breaks all the rules of accepted stellar evolution. FG Sagittae has changed from blue to yellow since 1955!

V605 Aquilae: Examination of old images and spectrograms reveal that V 605 Aquilae, studied by Knut Lundmark in the 1920's was a similar sort of beast,...

V4334 Sagittarii is better known as Sakurai's object, for its 1994 discoverer. It, too, changed both spectral type and surface composition very rapidly, and is now hydrogen-poor and carbon-rich, and well on its way to becoming the century's third new R CrB star.

So now there are at least four prime examples of stars that do not evolve according to the accepted thermonuclear model of how stars are powered. THESE CHANGES HAVE ALL BEEN OBSERVED DURING THE LAST FEW YEARS. These are stars that falsify the conventional understanding of stellar life cycles. All of them act in a manner predicted by the Electric Star hypothesis.

If we trust ancient observers of the sky (our group is based on doing exactly that, is it not?), then there are three additional stars that have changed ("evolved") during the last couple of millennia.

Sirius is a main sequence, brilliant white A-type star. The ancients (among them: Cicero, Horace, Ptolemy, and Seneca) called it red or "coppery" in color. Seneca, in the days of Nero, called it "redder than Mars", whereas he described Jupiter as "not at all red."

Castor is designated as the alpha star in the constellation of Gemini, but it is not as brilliant as the beta star, Pollux. Stars in constellations are always named alpha, beta, gamma, etc., in decreasing order of apparent brilliance. Castor is the 23rd brightest star in the sky while Pollux is the 17th brightest. It has been suggested therefore that since the time of the ancients, Castor has lost luminosity.

Capella was described as being a "red star" (we would call it M-type) by several ancient and medieval writers including Ptolemy and Riccioli. It has now been confirmed to be a binary - one G-type and one F-type. Not M-type.

In the Electric Star version of "stellar evolution" things can happen quickly. If the fusion model were correct, it would take hundreds of thousands of years for a star to change from one place in the HR diagram to another. It would not be observed within a "human lifetime", or have been observed over an astronomically relatively short period of a mere, say, 2000 years.

It didn't take FG Sagittae hundreds of thousands of years to "run down." The star V838 Monocerotis has moved half way across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram in a few months. Migrating across the HR diagram can happen very rapidly - and apparently does! How many such counter-examples does it take for astrophysicists to realize their stellar fusion theory has been falsified?

This is because Sirius is a binary star. Its companion, whimsically called "The Pup", is a white dwarf star of apparent magnitude 8.5. It is nearly lost in Sirius' glare.

Below is a Chandra x ray image of Sirius and the Pup.

Back in ancient times, the white dwarf may have still been a red giant (This still seems to be a very short timeline, of course).

The red giant spilled material that Sirius captured and added to its bulk. Now Sirius is a bright white "A" type star.

Excerpt from Burnham's Celestial Handbook, Volume One:

In ancient times, the color of Sirius was often referred to as red, reddish, or ruddy, and the star was sometimes calley Bloody, and referred to as Blazing like fire. (Although blazing may have simply been a reference to its brightness). Was Sirius red in ancient times? Did its color change over the last several thousand years? This is yet another mystery associated with the brightest of stars, Sirius. In The Iliad, Homer referres to Sirius gleaming like Achilles' copper shield. Earlier, the Babylonians referred to Sirius as Kak-si-di, which meant "shining like copper." Granted both writings were done during the bronze age, when copper was the commonly used metal, and so would have perhaps been a common metaphor for something shiny or brilliant. However, both the Greek writer Aratus, and the Roman poet and writer Cicero referred to Sirius' color as "ruddy." Seneca, Nero's tutor, stated that Sirius was "redder than Mars" and compared it to Jupiter which he states is not at all red, (Mars is quite reddish, while Jupiter has a distinct yellowish tint to the naked eye.) Another clue is the fact that in the days of ancient Rome, "ruddy dogs" were sacrificed to the "Dog Star", Sirius; (ruddy dogs, and dog star seem to indicate some connection with color). Even more telling is a statement by Ptolemy, one of the greatest natural scientists and geographers of Roman history, who compares Sirius with Betelgeuse and Antares, two indisputably red colored stars, (and red giants), as all being fiery red.

Today, we know Sirius as a type A1 main sequence star with a surface temperature of about 10,000 K and a luminosity of about 23 times our Sun. Our Sun on the other hand, has a surface temperature of about 6000 K, and is a typical yellow main sequence star. Sirius is a brilliant white to very slightly bluish. It seems highly unlikely that Sirius could have undergone enough stellar evolution in 2000 years to increase its color. Also such a color shift (from red to yellow to white to blue) would indicate an increase in temperature and gas contraction over this time, rather than a decrease in temperature and expansion of gas which would be the customary evolutionary route.

In 1862, it was discovered that Sirius was actually a double star, the larger, brighter counterpart being Sirius A, and the smaller dimmer companion being Sirius B, interestingly a white dwarf star. The two stars are seperated by only about 11 arc seconds at maximum seperation (the orbital period is just under 50 years). Fainter Sirius B has a magnitude of only about 8.7 while Sirius A has a relative magnitude of nearly -1.5. It has been suggested that the color shift of Sirius, as indicated by the ancients above, could have been the result of the eveloution of Sirius B, which may have gone from a much brighter red giant to a white dwarf. This is a typical chain of events in stellar evolution, but such a change is unlikely over so short a time. (It is thought, that the process would take at least 10 to 20 times longer than the indicated 2000 or so years.) Lastly, Sirius B is the nearest and brightest white dwarf that we know of, only about 8.7 light years distant. Such a "flare out," if it occurred would certainly have been observed from Earth, and would also have been bright enough to have significantly effected the overall brightness and color of Sirius.

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