2.000 kometen per dag vermaald in puinschijf van jonge ster
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In de puinschijf die rond de jonge ster Fomalhaut hangt, vonden wetenschappers extreem fijn en pluizig stof. De grote hoeveelheid fijn stof en de samenstelling ervan verraden dat er in de puinschijf elke dag zo’n 2.000 kometen botsen en verpulveren. Dat blijkt uit een studie van een internationaal team van sterrenkundigen onder leiding van postdoctoraal onderzoeker Bram Acke van de KU Leuven.
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Crushing 2000 comets per day in another planetary system
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New images from ESA's Herschel Space Observatory reveal the glow from dust in the debris disk - a structure resembling the Kuiper Belt in the primordial Solar System - around the young star Fomalhaut. Detailed studies suggest that the dust in this debris disk consists of 'fluffy' aggregates of grains, which are produced by the frequent collisions taking place between comets within the disk.
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Stripped planets around a former red giant star
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An international research team, including Dr. Roy Østensen of the University of Leuven found a system of compact planets around a former red giant star. The orbits of the planets are so close to the star that they must have been engulfed in the outer layers of the star's atmosphere when it was a red giant. The red giant star's atmosphere ripped off the atmosphere and surface of the planets, leaving the planets stripped and compact. The team reports about the discovery in the journal Nature, in the issue of 21 december 2011.
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Astronomers reveal a rapidly spinning core inside old stars
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An international team of astronomers led by PhD student Paul Beck from Leuven University in Belgium have managed to look deep inside some old stars and discovered that their cores spin at least ten times as fast as their surfaces. The result appeared today in the renowned journal Nature.
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Feast your Eyes on the Fried Egg Nebula
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Astronomers, including KU Leuven staff, have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to image a colossal star that belongs to one of the rarest classes of stars in the Universe, the yellow hypergiants. The new picture is the best ever taken of a star in this class and shows for the first time a huge dusty double shell surrounding the central hypergiant. The star and its shells resemble an egg white around a yolky centre, leading the astronomers to nickname the object the Fried Egg Nebula.
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Een team van astronomen, waaronder ook enkele Leuvense sterrenkundigen, hebben met ESO’s Very Large Telescope een opname gemaakt van een kolossale ster die tot de zeldzame klasse van de gele hyperreuzen behoort. De nieuwe opname is de beste die ooit van een ster van dit type is gemaakt en laat voor het eerst een enorme dubbele stofschil rond de hyperreus zien. De ster en zijn omhulsel doen denken aan een gebakken ei, wat het object een nogal bijzondere bijnaam heeft opgeleverd.
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Herschel probes the dusty history of a giant star
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An international team led by KU Leuven astronomer Leen Decin discovered not less than a dozen cold dust arcs around the giant star CW Leo. The team used the sensitive PACS instrument onboard the Herschel Space Observatory to detect for the first time arcs of dust far away from the star.
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Herschel haalt de geschiedenis van een reus uit het stof: een internationaal team onder leiding van KU Leuven astronome Leen Decin ontdekte een hele reeks schillen van koud stof rond de reuzenster CW Leo.
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The flames of Betelgeuse
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Using the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), a team of astronomers, including dr. Tijl Verhoelst of the Institute of Astronomy KU Leuven, have imaged a complex and bright nebula around the supergiant star Betelgeuse in greater detail than ever before. This structure, which resembles flames emanating from the star, is formed as the behemoth sheds its material into space.
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Astronomers detect echoes from the depth of a red giant star
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On March, 17, 2011, an international team of astronomers, reported the discovery of waves inside a star that travel so deep that they reach the core. The discovery was published in the renowned journal Science, and was possible thanks to precise measurements with the Kepler space telescope. The paper was led by KU Leuven PhD student Paul Beck.
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Herschel detection explains the origin of water in a carbon star
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Using ESA's Herschel Space Observatory, an international team lead by KU Leuven astronomer Leen Decin detected water vapour in a location previously thought to be impossible - in the atmosphere of an ageing, red giant carbon star. The rich and detailed data provided by Herschel can be explained within a new framework in which ultraviolet photons play a key role. These results were reported in the 2 September 2010 issue of Nature.
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The deep internal structure of stars revealed
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Researchers of the Institute of Astronomy at K.U.Leuven delivered a breaktrough in the asteroseismology research of SPB-stars (Slowly Pulsating B-stars). These stars are massive and relatively short-lived stars that play a key role in the evolution of the Universe. They published the results in the 11 March 2010 issue of the journal Nature.
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Non-radial oscilations in red giant stars
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Using very precise measurements of brightness variations obtained with the satellite CoRoT, an international team of astronomers lead by Joris De Ridder, astronomer at the institute of Astronomy at K.U.Leuven, discovered for the first time nonradial oscillations in red giant stars. This opens up the prospect of applying asteroseismic techniques to probe the interior of elderly stars. The team published their findings in the 21 May 2009 issue of the journal Nature.
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VLT detects disc around aged star
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A team of European astronomers, lead by Pieter Deroo, PhD student at the institute of Astronomy at K.U.Leuven has used ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer and its razor-sharp eyes to discover a reservoir of dust trapped in a disc that surrounds an elderly star. The discovery provides additional clues about the shaping of planetary nebulae.
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Planet survives stellar explosion
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A planet circling close around the hot B-type subdwarf V 391 Pegasi has survived the evolution from its star towards a red giant. The planet called V 391 Pegasi B is 1.7 astronomical units away from V 391 Pegasi and was discovered by means of asteroseismic data. K.U.Leuven astronomer Roy Ostensen belongs to the international team that made this fascinating discovery. Their results are published in the 12 september 2007 issue of Nature.
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The red rectangle: a dying star sculpts rungs of gas and dust
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Astronomers may not have observed the fabled "Stairway to Heaven," but they have photographed something almost as intriguing: ladder-like structures surrounding a dying star. A new image, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals startling new details of one of the most unusual nebulae known in our Milky Way. Cataloged as HD 44179, this nebula is more commonly called the "Red Rectangle" because of its unique shape and color as seen with ground-based telescopes. K.U.Leuven astronomer Hans Van Winckel is the principal investigator for these Hubble observations.
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Starquakes shed light on stellar evolution
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Astronomers at the universities of Leuven, Liège and Wroclaw, lead by K.U.Leuven astronomer Conny Aerts, have obtained a clearer picture of how the movement in a star's core affects its evolution. They combined more than 1400 observations made over a 21-year period of the star HD 129929 using a technique known as asteroseismology. They published their results in the 29 May 2003 issue of the journal Science.
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Ultrabass Sounds of the Giant Star Xi Hya
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Astronomers of the institute of Astronomy at K.U.Leuven, together with collaborators at Geneva Observatory (CH) and Aarhus University (DK) discovered for the first time observations of solar-type oscillations in a star very different from the Sun.
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Planet formation around dying star
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Astronomers at the universities of Amsterdam, Louvain, Groningen and Utrecht found proof that planets can form around old, dying stars. In the vicinity of the Red Rectangle they have detected a ring of matter constituting the first stage of planet formation. Their results will be published in Nature on 26 February 1998.
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