Monday, September 9, 2013

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I found this star to be very interesting for a few reasons. With a simple glance you would just think it is a pretty star because of the nebula surrounding it so why is it so interesting or important? "Pulsating RS Puppis, the brightest star in the image center, is some ten times more massive than our Sun and on average 15,000 times more luminous." These are just a few words that describe how important it is. This star also is used to determine some of the first steps of the cosmic distance scale because of how bright it is. Scientists are able to use the brightness of RS Puppis and the surrounding nebula along with the known speed of light to determine its distance with very little error. RS Puppis is approximately 6.500 light-years away! -James Tubridy




4 comments:

  1. This picture, in my opinion, is very striking. If I had seen it, I would have chosen it as it's very visually interesting. What I also thought was good about your picture was your content. Apart from beauty, it had intriguing facts such as it being brighter and bigger than our sun. From looking at the picture, I could hardly guess that. I found it also impressive how scientists could figure out an almost approximate distance with only a bit of information known.

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  2. The picture of the star is very amazing, both the scale and the visual aspect. I also found the technologies and methods used by scientists to determine the scale, distance, brightness, and other properties of the star to be very interesting, and I would be interested in learning more about that.

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  3. The picture of the star is very amazing, both the scale and the visual aspect. I also found the technologies and methods used by scientists to determine the scale, distance, brightness, and other properties of the star to be very interesting, and I would be interested in learning more about that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oops, I think you have the wrong link there! I tried to click it to learn more about this photo.

    What questions does this photo raise for you?

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