NASA’s Hubble Tracks Down a ‘Blue Lurker’ Among Stars
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a rare and elusive star hidden within a nearby star cluster. The star, nicknamed a “blue lurker,” is a hot and massive object that has been masquerading as a cooler, dimmer star for billions of years.
The blue lurker was found in the cluster Messier 67, which is located about 2,500 light-years from Earth. The cluster is home to hundreds of thousands of stars, most of which are old and red. However, Hubble’s sharp eyes were able to pick out a single blue star that stood out from the rest.
“This star is a bit of a mystery,” said Jay Anderson of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who led the study. “It’s much hotter and more massive than the other stars in the cluster, but it’s been hiding in plain sight for billions of years.”
The blue lurker is a type of star known as a blue straggler. Blue stragglers are stars that are hotter and more massive than their siblings in a star cluster. They are thought to form when two stars merge together, creating a single, more massive star.
The blue lurker in Messier 67 is one of the most extreme blue stragglers ever found. It is about twice as massive as the Sun and has a surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it one of the hottest stars in the cluster.
“We think this star formed from the merger of two smaller stars about 10 billion years ago,” said Anderson. “It’s been hiding in plain sight ever since, because it’s been mimicking the light of a cooler, dimmer star.”
The blue lurker was discovered by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. The camera’s sharp vision was able to resolve the star from the other stars in the cluster. The discovery was confirmed by the telescope’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which analyzed the star’s light and revealed its true nature.
The discovery of the blue lurker provides new insights into the formation and evolution of stars. It also shows that even in well-studied star clusters, there are still hidden surprises waiting to be found.
“This discovery is a reminder that there’s still a lot we don’t know about the universe,” said Anderson. “Hubble is helping us to uncover these hidden secrets, one star at a time.”
NASA’s Hubble Tracks Down a ‘Blue Lurker’ Among Stars
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