About this episode
This episode explores a unique quadruple star system in Cygnus and the life cycle of its stars.
A quadruple star system in Cygnus takes the concept of a close-knit family to extremes. It consists of three big, heavy stars packed into a region smaller than the orbit of Mercury, the Sun’s closest planet. A fourth star is looking on from a wider separation – about the distance between the Sun and Jupiter, the fifth planet. The system was discovered by a planet-hunting space telescope. Over several years, it revealed two of the stars, then three, and now, four. Astronomers say the stars probably formed together, from the same cloud of gas and dust. That means the four stars are siblings. All three of the central stars are bigger, brighter, and hotter than the Sun. Two of them form a binary – they orbit each other once every three days. The more massive of those stars is already nearing the end of its life. It’s beginning to puff up. It should get so big that it will engulf its close companion. That will begin a complicated process in which all three stars should merge. Within about 300 million years, all that will be left of them is a single, heavy “corpse” known as a white dwarf. The fourth star will remain on its own. It’s about the…
People in this episode
Host: Billy Henry
Topics covered
- quadruple star system
- astronomy
- stellar evolution
- binary stars
- white dwarfs
Keywords
- quadruple star
- Cygnus
- binary stars
- white dwarf
- stellar formation
Mentioned in this episode
Places: Cygnus, Mercury, Jupiter
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