2003 SPACE SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| EARTH'S NEIGHBORHOOD GETS MORE CROWDED
| G03-033 | 05/20/03 | 00:03:17 | Roll over, Alpha Centauri, and tell Barnard's star the news: NASA researchers discovered a star that could be the third-closest to our Sun, ousting Wolf 359 in the constellation Leo from that position. Scientists found the "new" star, designated SO25300.5+165258, while searching for other, brighter stars in September 2002. No one's spotted this neighbor before since it shines 300,000 times more faintly than our sun and resides an estimated 7.8 light years away in the direction of constellation Aries. The Alpha Centauri three-star system, Earth's closest stellar neighbor, is 4.2 light years away. More faint neighbors may still await detection.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): Somewhere Out There - Researchers think SO25300.5+165258 is a small, cool star known as an M6.5 red dwarf. Red stars have the lowest surface temperatures of any stars, and dwarfs have sizes no bigger than the Sun. So this small, cool star so far away shines very faintly to observers on Earth, allowing it to escape detection until now. However, this particular star appears three times dimmer than expected for its proximity, meaning that either researchers underestimated the distance from Earth, or this new star has unusual properties for a red dwarf. The star could be as far away as 10.1 light-years, if the initial distance estimate proves too low but the star proves a typical red dwarf. This fly-through animation of the heavens highlights the probable range of locations of the star. Starting at our Sun, we move out past the closest star-systems to the location of the new star. Blue rings indicate distances from the Sun of 4.5, 5, 6.5, and 10 light years.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (2): Star Light, Star Not So Bright - Researchers found the nearby star while searching for hotter, more distant stars that appear to move rapidly across the sky. They noticed the star, depicted in this artist's concept, seemed to change positions on star maps over time while other stars remained in place. By using a series of successive images, scientists estimated the distance to the star from its positions; the star's large shift indicated it could be close to Earth. Researchers refined their distance estimates by determining the star's color, red, which tells them how hot the star burns and how much light it puts out, which gets dimmer over distance. With more precise measurements of the star's properties, researchers will determine more exactly where in this patch of sky the star resides.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (3): Size Comparison - This image shows the relative size of the Sun, the newly-discovered star (in red), and planet Earth. The Sun's diameter, about 860,00 miles, is roughly seven times as large as the new star, if the star truly resides 7.8 light-years away. The Earth has diameter of about 8,000 miles.
Courtesy: NASA
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