Tired Old Star Taking A Schvitz

Tired Old Star Taking A Schvitz

Let me tell ya, sonny, they don’t make stars like CW Leonis anymore. You think the sun is a big deal? The sun is nothing! This guy is twice the size-with a radius 250 times bigger! So in his twilight years, 500 light years from Earth, it’s only right that he gets to enjoy one of life’s true pleasures: a “steam bath.” I heard from Herschel.

“The scientists working on Herschel propose that a previously unsuspected chemical process is at work, one in which ultraviolet light from nearby bright, hot stars is breaking up the carbon monoxide and releasing its oxygen atoms to join up with hydrogen and form water molecules. In an aged star like CW Leonis, which is also throwing off a large envelope of gas and dust, such a chemical process ought normally to be blocked — the UV light should be prevented from getting through to the carbon monoxide to work on it. But Herschel and other telescopes have shown the stellar wind billowing away from CW Leonis to be extremely clumpy, allowing the UV light to penetrate deep in towards the star and trigger the production of water.”

“This is really exciting,” said Dr. Leen Decin, who’s been studying the telescope images at Belgium’s Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. “Since it is the first time that we have seen a lot of carbon and water molecules co-existing close to a very luminous, but dying, star.”