Chasing a Star Names MIRA

Reported January 2008

PASADENA, Calf. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- An amazing new find by astronomers may show us a whole new planetary system being formed. Past the moon and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, 350 light-years from Earth … a speeding bullet is hurling across space. This star is known as MIRA.

Astronomers have been studying it for 400 years -- scientists are now getting a good look at what it’s leaving behind.

“No star has ever shown a tail like this before,” Chris Martin, Ph.D., astronomer at the California Institute of Technology told Ivanhoe.

Dr. Martin is one of the first to witness the comet-like tail of MRA. He saw it streaking across the sky through the galaxy evolution explorer -- a satellite sensitive to ultraviolet light.

“We noticed around the star was this, a little bit of fluff that no one knew was there," Dr. Martin said.

As MIRA speeds along at 291 thousand miles an hour, it sheds carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed to form new stars, planets and possibly even life.

“We’re seeing this process of reseeding the gas between the stars with heavy elements that ultimately form new solar systems,” Dr. Martin said.

Everything you see here has been left behind by MIRA during the past 30-thousand years -- that dates back to before the ice age, before humans, before neanderthals.

“No one would have predicted a tail like this, a tail that only appears in the ultra-violet … no one would knew that would happen and the picture is so amazing … so the combination of those two things, made it one of the peak events of my life,” Dr. Martin said.

And Dr. Martin hopes this glimpse of our past may give us a revealing look into our future.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Dr. Chris Martin
Astronomer
California Institute of Technology
(626) 395-4243
cmartin@srl.caltech.edu

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