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Monday 21 July 2008


The Northern Star, whose vibrations were thought to be dying away, appears to have come to life again.

An international team of astronomers has observed that vibrations in the Pole star, which had been fading away to almost nothing over the last hundred years, have recovered and are now increasing.  And the astronomers don’t know why.

The discovery will be announced during the “Cool Stars 15” conference at the University of St Andrews. Dr Alan Penny from the School of Physics and Astronomy will present results of the recovery to around 350 international delegates at the meeting that runs from July 21-25.

The astronomers were watching Polaris in the expectation that they would catch the star switching off its vibrations completely when they made the surprising observation of its revival.

Dr Penny explained, “It was only through an innovative use of two small relatively unknown telescopes in space and a telescope in Arizona that we were able to discover and follow this star’s recovery so accurately.”

Team leader, Dr Hans Bruntt of the University of Sydney, had been using a small telescope attached to NASA’s now defunct infrared space telescope (WIRE) to study the star for a short period of time.   He knew Dr Penny was using a device known as the SMEI space camera – predominately employed to watch matter being ejected from the Sun – to do long-term monitoring of stars. When the SMEI data were analysed this recovery of Polaris was seen, and could also be traced in the WIRE data.

Data illustrating the recovery of Polaris. Astronomers had been monitoring Polaris in the expectation that they would catch the star switching off its vibrations completely when they made the surprising observation of its revival.Professor Joel Eaton of Tennessee State University was also doing long-term monitoring, and, using the AST automated spectroscopic telescope located in Arizona, was able to confirm the observations of Polaris by watching the change in velocity of the surface of the star as the variation caused it to expand and contract.

Although Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar declared, “I am as constant as the Northern star, Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament”, Polaris is a ‘Cepheid’ variable star, getting brighter and fainter every four days. Cepheids do play a vital part as ‘standard candles’ in determining the size of the Universe, but the details of their variations are not well understood.

Dr Penny said, “One hundred years ago Polaris varied by 10%, but over the last century the variations became smaller and smaller until ten years ago it only varied by 2%.

“It was thought the structure of the star was changing to switch off the vibration. Yet the team has found that about ten years ago the vibrations started picking up and are now back up at the 4% level.”

The slow decline in variability was in itself unusual, as no other Cepheid is known to do this. Astronomers thought that Polaris was ageing and its structure was changing so that it was no longer unstable. This was being followed to learn about how stars age. Now Polaris has ‘turned on’ again this explanation seems unlikely and there may be a complex process in the outer layers of the star, with more than one mode of variability.

The paper will be published in the Aug 10 edition of the ‘Astrophysical Journal’.   A pre-publication paper is available on http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.3593

ENDS

NOTE TO EDITORS:

Dr Alan Penny is available for interview on Tel: +44 1334 463 322, Mobile: +44 7804 670 620 or Email: [email protected]

Dr Hans Bruntt, University of Sydney: Tel: +61 2 9351 3041, Mobile: +61 4 1997 0632, Email: [email protected]

Professor Joel Eaton, Tennessee State University: Tel: +1 615 277 1602, Email: [email protected]

Dr Nancy Evans, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: Tel: +1 617 495 7146, Mobile: +1 617 939 4900, Email: [email protected]

Dr Martin Dominik, ‘Cool Stars 15’ Media Liaison Scientist: Tel: +44 1334 463 068, Email: [email protected]

“Cool Stars 15” is the world’s largest international astronomical conference. This year’s meeting will come to the UK for the first time. 355 astronomers will gather in St Andrews to present over 250 papers.  For more information visit  http://star-www.st-and.ac.uk/coolstars15

NOTE TO PICTURE EDITORS:

IMAGES ARE AVAILABLE FROM http://star-www.st-and.ac.uk/~ap22/media/ OR FROM THE PRESS OFFICE – CONTACTS BELOW.

Issued by the Press Office, University of St Andrews
Contact Fiona Armstrong, Press Officer on Tel: 01334 462530 / 462529, Mobile: 07730 415 015 or Email: [email protected]
Ref:  Polaris 210708
View the latest University press releases at www.st-andrews.ac.uk


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