Explanation: To seventeenth century astronomers, Omicron Ceti or Mira was known as a wonderful star - a star whose brightness could change dramatically in the course of about 11 months. Modern astronomers now recognize an entire class of long period Mira-type variables as cool, pulsating, red giant stars, 700 or so times the diameter of the Sun. Only 420 light-years away, red giant Mira (Mira A, right) itself co-orbits with a companion star, a small white dwarf (Mira B). Mira B is surround by a disk of material drawn from the pulsating giant and in such a double star system, the white dwarf star's hot accretion disk is expected to produce some x-rays. But this sharp, false-color image from the Chandra Observatory also captures the cool giant star strongly flaring at x-ray energies, clearly separated from the x-ray emission of its companion's accretion disk. Placing your cursor over the Chandra x-ray image of Mira will reveal an artist's vision of this still wonderful interacting binary star system.

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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.

Publikacii s klyuchevymi slovami: Mira - binary star - variable star - accretion disk - red giant - white dwarf - Mira - dvoinye zvezdy - Peremennye zvezdy - rentgenovskoe izluchenie - akkrecionnyi disk - krasnyi gigant - belyi karlik Publikacii so slovami: Mira - binary star - variable star - accretion disk - red giant - white dwarf - Mira - dvoinye zvezdy - Peremennye zvezdy - rentgenovskoe izluchenie - akkrecionnyi disk - krasnyi gigant - belyi karlik

Sm. takzhe: Akkrecionnyi disk chernoi dyry: vizualizaciya NGC 2440: kokon novogo belogo karlika Tumannost' Orla i goryachie rentgenovskie zvezdy Svetovye eho ot V838 Edinoroga Vzryvy na belom karlike RS Zmeenosca Dvazhdy iskrivlennyi mir dvoinyh chernyh dyr BHB2007: formirovanie dvoinoi zvezdy Vse publikacii na tu zhe temu >>