Using the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) radio telescope, astronomers have watched as two stars come together to form a massive stellar binary. The observations revealed that these stars didn't form from the same collapsing cloud of gas and dust, as most binary stars are assumed to form, but instead came together later in their infancy.
Here on Earth, we are slightly prejudiced by our single sun to view stars as somewhat solitary bodies. However, around half of sun-sized stars in the Milky Way have a companion star. This percentage of stellar partnership rises to around 90% of massive stars. Eventually, these massive stars go supernova and shape their cosmic surroundings. Thus, understanding these binary systems is vital to our understanding of stars and of galaxies in general.
The team behind this research initially observed the still-growing massive stars, or protostars, in the binary system IRAS 07299−1651, located around 5,300 light-years away in 2019. At first, the researchers didn't see anything that suggested these stars didn't form ...
English (US)