Stars on the Run

Zeta Ophiuchi, the bright star at the center of this image, is a potential runaway star thought to have been ejected from its home cluster by a supernova. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

OB stars are typically born in clusters, like the Trapezium Cluster at the heart of the Orion Nebula, shown here.
Credit: ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/R.Gendler, J.-E. Ovaldsen, and A. Hornstrup; CC BY 4.0

A substantial number of O and B stars say goodbye to their birth clusters and spend their lives zooming through space alone. New research uses the most recent Gaia data to investigate the properties of these runaway stars.

Massive Stars Far from Home

The majority of the most massive stars in our galaxy — those with spectral types O and B, also called OB stars — live and die within their natal star clusters, never traveling far from where they were born during their brief, luminous lives. But roughly 20–30% of OB stars lead significantly more adventurous lives. So-called runaway stars careen through space on a solo adventure or with a single companion, traveling light-years from their birthplaces.

Stars can be ejected from their birth clusters by dynamical interactions or supernova explosions. Dynamical ejection happens when stars in a crowded cluster pass too close to one another, slingshotting one or more stars into space. A star that explodes as a supernova can expel its close binary companion from the cluster. In rare cases, the exploding star and its companion can escape the cluster together. It’s not yet known which process creates more runaway stars or how the two populations of runaways differ.

Vectors showing the motion across the sky of the stars in the authors’ sample. Eclipsing binaries (EB) and double-lined spectroscopic binaries (SB2) were ejected dynamically. High-mass X-ray binaries (HMXB) have experienced a supernova. Credit: Phillips et al. 2024

A Search for Runaway Stars

Diving into this question, a team led by Grant Phillips (University of Michigan) investigated more than 300 potential runaways in a nearby dwarf galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud. The stars in their sample were chosen for being at least 90 light-years from other OB stars (with the exception of stars in binary systems, which may have escaped their home cluster together).

The binary systems in the sample immediately gave away how they were launched into space: binary systems that don’t contain a neutron star or a black hole can’t have experienced a supernova — those binaries must have been kicked out of their clusters through dynamical interactions. Binary systems that do contain a neutron star or a black hole must have experienced a supernova. As for solo runaway stars, the team’s earlier research suggested that typical OB stars tend to be expelled through dynamical interactions, while stars with emission lines in their spectra due to rapid rotation — OBe stars — tend to be ejected by supernovae.

Mass and velocity distributions for stars ejected dynamically (left) and via supernovae (right).
Credit: Phillips et al. 2024

Population Comparison

Using the third release of Gaia spacecraft data, Phillips’s team calculated the velocities of the stars in their sample. They found that the velocities of the single OBe stars overlapped well with those of the post-supernova binary systems, although the OBe stars’ velocities extended to higher values. While this could be an effect of small-number statistics, it could also be due to some stars reaching high velocities through a two-step process: first, dynamical ejection as a member of a binary system; then, an extra velocity kick when the binary companion goes supernova.

The velocities of typical OB stars are similar to the velocities of binary systems ejected dynamically, supporting the hypothesis that these stars are also ejected this way. Intriguingly, the velocity distribution for typical OB stars may have two peaks. The authors speculate that the peaks could point to two groups of dynamical interactions: stars ejected by just a single other star versus stars ejected by a binary system.

Underpinning these findings is the rich, precise dataset from Gaia, which allowed the team to identify systematic offsets from their previous work based on earlier data releases from the spacecraft. Hopefully, future data releases can give even more clues to the origins of these runaway stars!

Citation

“Runaway OB Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud. III. Updated Kinematics and Insights into Dynamical versus Supernova Ejections,” Grant D. Phillips et al 2024 ApJ 966 243. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad3909

Source: American Astronomical Society/AAS-Nova

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Zeta Ophiuchi: Embracing a Rejected Star

Zeta Ophiuchi

Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC/Dublin Inst. Advanced Studies/S. Green et al
Infrared: NASA/JPL/Spitzer

JPEG (244.6 kb) - Large JPEG (8.7 MB)- Tiff (33.6 MB) -More Images

A Tour of Zeta Ophiuchi -  More Animations

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Zeta Ophiuchi is a star with a complicated past, having likely been ejected from its birthplace by a powerful stellar explosion. A new look by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory helps tell more of the story of this runaway star.

Located about 440 light-years from Earth, Zeta Ophiuchi is a hot star that is 20 times more massive than the Sun. Previous observations have provided evidence that Zeta Ophiuchi was once in close orbit with another star, before being ejected at about 100,000 miles per hour when this companion was destroyed in a supernova explosion over a million years ago. Previously released infrared data from NASA's now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, seen in this new composite image, reveals a spectacular shock wave (red and green) that was formed by matter blowing away from the star's surface and slamming into gas in its path. Data from Chandra shows a bubble of X-ray emission (blue) located around the star, produced by gas that has been heated by the effects of the shock wave to tens of millions of degrees.

A team of astronomers led by Samuel Green from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland has constructed the first detailed computer models of the shock wave. They have begun testing whether the models can explain the data obtained at different wavelengths, including X-ray, optical, infrared and radio observations. All three of the different computer models predict fainter X-ray emission than observed. The bubble of X-ray emission is brightest near the star, whereas two of the three computer models predict the X-ray emission should be brighter near the shock wave.

In the future these researchers plan to test more complicated models with additional physics — including the effects of turbulence, and particle acceleration — to see whether the agreement with X-ray data will improve.

A paper describing these results has been accepted in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics and a preprint is available here. The Chandra data used here was originally analyzed by Jesús Toala from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia in Spain, who also wrote the proposal that led to the observations.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

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Fast Facts for Zeta Ophiuchi:

Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC/Dublin Inst. Advanced Studies/S. Green et al.; Infrared: NASA/JPL/Spitzer Scale: Image is about 36 arcmin (4.6 light-years) across.
Category:Normal Stars & Star Clusters
Coordinates (J2000): RA 16h 37m 09.54s | Dec -10° 34´ 01.53"
Constellation:Ophiuchus
Observation Date: July 3, 2013
Observation Time: 20 hours 3 minutes
Obs. ID: 14540
Instrument:ACIS
References: Green, S. et al., 2022, A&A, accepted;arXiv:2203.06331
Color Code: X-ray: dark blue; Infrared: red, green, and blue
Distance Estimate: About 440 light-years

Source: NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory

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Runaway Stars Leave Infrared Waves in Space

Bow shocks thought to mark the paths of massive, speeding stars are highlighted in these images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Wyoming.  › Full image and caption

Astronomers are finding dozens of the fastest stars in our galaxy with the help of images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

When some speedy, massive stars plow through space, they can cause material to stack up in front of them in the same way that water piles up ahead of a ship. Called bow shocks, these dramatic, arc-shaped features in space are leading researchers to uncover massive, so-called runaway stars.

"Some stars get the boot when their companion star explodes in a supernova, and others can get kicked out of crowded star clusters," said astronomer William Chick from the University of Wyoming in Laramie, who presented his team's new results at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Kissimmee, Florida. "The gravitational boost increases a star's speed relative to other stars."

Our own sun is strolling through our Milky Way galaxy at a moderate pace. It is not clear whether our sun creates a bow shock. By comparison, a massive star with a stunning bow shock, called Zeta Ophiuchi (or Zeta Oph), is traveling around the galaxy faster than our sun, at 54,000 mph (24 kilometers per second) relative to its surroundings. Zeta Oph's giant bow shock can be seen in this image from the WISE mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/pia13455.html

 

Both the speed of stars moving through space and their mass contribute to the size and shapes of bow shocks. The more massive a star, the more material it sheds in high-speed winds. Zeta Oph, which is about 20 times as massive as our sun, has supersonic winds that slam into the material in front of it.

The result is a pile-up of material that glows. The arc-shaped material heats up and shines with infrared light. That infrared light is assigned the color red in the many pictures of bow shocks captured by Spitzer and WISE.

Chick and his team turned to archival infrared data from Spitzer and WISE to identify new bow shocks, including more distant ones that are harder to find. Their initial search turned up more than 200 images of fuzzy red arcs. They then used the Wyoming Infrared Observatory, near Laramie, to follow up on 80 of these candidates and identify the sources behind the suspected bow shocks. Most turned out to be massive stars. 

The findings suggest that many of the bow shocks are the result of speedy runaways that were given a gravitational kick by other stars. However, in a few cases, the arc-shaped features could turn out to be something else, such as dust from stars and birth clouds of newborn stars. The team plans more observations to confirm the presence of bow shocks.

"We are using the bow shocks to find massive and/or runaway stars," said astronomer Henry "Chip" Kobulnicky, also from the University of Wyoming. "The bow shocks are new laboratories for studying massive stars and answering questions about the fate and evolution of these stars."

Another group of researchers, led by Cintia Peri of the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy, is also using Spitzer and WISE data to find new bow shocks in space. Only instead of searching for the arcs at the onset, they start by hunting down known speedy stars, and then they scan them for bow shocks.

"WISE and Spitzer have given us the best images of bow shocks so far," said Peri. "In many cases, bow shocks that looked very diffuse before, can now be resolved, and, moreover, we can see some new details of the structures."

Some of the first bow shocks from runaway stars were identified in the 1980s by David Van Buren of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He and his colleagues found them using infrared data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), a predecessor to WISE that scanned the whole infrared sky in 1983.

Kobulnicky and Chick belong to a larger team of researchers and students studying bow shocks and massive stars, including Matt Povich from the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. The National Science Foundation funds their research.

Images from Spitzer, WISE and IRAS are archived at the NASA Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about Spitzer is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer -  http://spitzer.caltech.edu

More information about WISE is at: http://www.nasa.gov/wise


Media Contact

Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Source: JPL-Caltech

Radio Telescopes Could Spot Stars Hidden in the Galactic Center

In this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, stellar winds flowing out from the fast-moving star Zeta Ophiuchi are creating a bow shock seen as glowing gossamer threads, which, for this star, are only seen in infrared light. A similar process in the galactic center could allow us to find stars we can't see any other way, according to new research.  High Resolution (jpg) - Low Resolution (jpg)

Cambridge, MA - The center of our Milky Way galaxy is a mysterious place. Not only is it thousands of light-years away, it's also cloaked in so much dust that most stars within are rendered invisible. Harvard researchers are proposing a new way to clear the fog and spot stars hiding there. They suggest looking for radio waves coming from supersonic stars.

"There's a lot we don’t know about the galactic center, and a lot we want to learn," says lead author Idan Ginsburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "Using this technique, we think we can find stars that no one has seen before."

The long path from the center of our galaxy to Earth is so choked with dust that out of every trillion photons of visible light coming our way, only one photon will reach our telescopes. Radio waves, from a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, have lower energies and longer wavelengths. They can pass through the dust unimpeded.

On their own, stars aren’t bright enough in the radio for us to detect them at such distances. However, if a star is traveling through gas faster than the speed of sound, the situation changes. Material blowing off of the star as a stellar wind can plow into the interstellar gases and create a shock wave. And through a process called synchrotron radiation, electrons accelerated by that shock wave produce radio emission that we could potentially detect.

"In a sense, we're looking for the cosmic equivalent of a sonic boom from an airplane," explains Ginsburg.

To create a shock wave, the star would have to be moving at a speed of thousands of miles per second. This is possible in the galactic center since the stars there are influenced by the strong gravity of a supermassive black hole. When an orbiting star reaches its closest approach to the black hole, it can easily acquire the required speed.

The researchers suggest looking for this effect from one already known star called S2. This star, which is hot and bright enough to be seen in the infrared despite all the dust, will make its closest approach to the Galactic center in late 2017 or early 2018. When it does, radio astronomers can target it to look for radio emission from its shock wave.

"S2 will be our litmus test. If it's seen in the radio, then potentially we can use this method to find smaller and fainter stars – stars that can’t be seen any other way," says co-author Avi Loeb of the CfA.

This work is reported in a paper authored by Idan Ginsburg, Xiawei Wang, Avi Loeb, and Ofer Cohen (CfA). It has been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

For more information, contact:

Christine Pulliam
Media Relations Manager
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7463
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)

Shot Away from its Companion, Giant Star Makes Waves

The giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is having a "shocking" effect on the surrounding dust clouds in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Stellar winds flowing out from this fast-moving star are making ripples in the dust as it approaches, creating a bow shock seen as glowing gossamer threads, which, for this star, are only seen in infrared light. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech . › Full image and caption

Like a ship plowing through still waters, the giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is speeding through space, making waves in the dust ahead. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a dramatic, infrared portrait of these glowing waves, also known as a bow shock.

Astronomers theorize that this star was once sitting pretty next to a companion star even heftier than itself. But when that star died in a fiery explosion, Zeta Ophiuchi was kicked away and sent flying. Zeta Ophiuchi, which is 20 times more massive and 80,000 times brighter than our sun, is racing along at about 54,000 mph (24 kilometers per second).

In this view, infrared light that we can't see with our eyes has been assigned visible colors. Zeta Ophiuchi appears as the bright blue star at center. As it charges through the dust, which appears green, fierce stellar winds push the material into waves. Where the waves are the most compressed, and the warmest, they appear red. This bow shock is analogous to the ripples that precede the bow of a ship as it moves through the water, or the pileup of air ahead of a supersonic airplane that results in a sonic boom.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, released a similar picture of the same object in 2011. WISE sees infrared light as does Spitzer, but WISE was an all-sky survey designed to take snapshots of the entire sky. Spitzer, by contrast, observes less of the sky, but in more detail. The WISE image can be seen at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-026 .

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Runaway Star Plows Through Space

The blue star near the center of this image is Zeta Ophiuchi. When seen in visible light it appears as a relatively dim red star surrounded by other dim stars and no dust. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA. Full image and caption

A massive star flung away from its former companion is plowing through space dust. The result is a brilliant bow shock, seen here as a yellow arc in a new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

The star, named Zeta Ophiuchi, is huge, with a mass of about 20 times that of our sun. In this image, in which infrared light has been translated into visible colors we see with our eyes, the star appears as the blue dot inside the bow shock.

Zeta Ophiuchi once orbited around an even heftier star. But when that star exploded in a supernova, Zeta Ophiuchi shot away like a bullet. It's traveling at a whopping 54,000 miles per hour (or 24 kilometers per second), and heading toward the upper left area of the picture.

As the star tears through space, its powerful winds push gas and dust out of its way and into what is called a bow shock. The material in the bow shock is so compressed that it glows with infrared light that WISE can see. The effect is similar to what happens when a boat speeds through water, pushing a wave in front of it.

This bow shock is completely hidden in visible light. Infrared images like this one from WISE are therefore important for shedding new light on the region.

JPL manages and operates WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise, http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov