All content for StarDate is the property of Billy Henry and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
StarDate, the longest-running national radio science feature in the U.S., tells listeners what to look for in the night sky.
An embryonic star may be about to vanish – perhaps for a century. It’s not going anywhere. Instead, it’ll be cloaked by a dense cloud that encircles two companions.
T Tauri is the prototype for a class of proto-stars. The gravity of such a star is causing it to collapse, making it hot and bright. But its core isn’t hot enough to ignite the fires of nuclear fusion, so it’s not yet a true star.
The star we see as T Tauri is about twice as massive as the Sun. It’s encircled by a disk of gas and dust – the raw materials for making planets. And it might already have given birth to at least one planet.
T Tauri is a member of a triple-star system. Its companion stars are close together, encircled by their own disk. It’s so thick that it hides the stars at visible wavelengths – we see them only in the infrared.
Now, the companions and their disk are starting to slide between us and the brighter star. The star has faded a good bit in recent years. Eventually, it may be hidden behind the disk as well. And it could take a century for the disk to move out of the way – allowing the brightest star of the T Tauri system to shine through once more.
Taurus is low in the east and southeast by late evening. T Tauri is just above Aldebaran, the bull’s brightest star, far to the lower left of the bright Moon. The young star is visible through a telescope – for now.
More about the Moon and the bull tomorrow.
Script by Damond Benningfield
StarDate
StarDate, the longest-running national radio science feature in the U.S., tells listeners what to look for in the night sky.
