NN Serpentis - Binary Star System More Like A Game Of Billiards
Sunday, November 21, 2010 - 11:31
in Astronomy & Space
Astronomers using two decades of observations from many telescopes around the world have discovered an unusual star system which looks like, and may even once have behaved like, a game of snooker. Or billiards, depending on which side of the pond you are on. They looked at a binary star system called NN Serpentis, which is 1670 light years away from Earth. NN Serpentis is actually a binary star system consisting of two stars, a red dwarf and a white dwarf, which orbit each other in an incredibly close, tight orbit. By lucky chance Earth sits in the same plane as this binary star system, so we can we can see the larger red dwarf eclipse the white dwarf every 3 hours and 7 minutes. read more