Two-faced star discovered for the first time: Surprised the scientific world
Scientists discovered a two-faced star and were stunned by its strange appearance. It was seen that the star in the white dwarf phase, named after Janus, a double-faced mythological god, is almost entirely composed of hydrogen on one side and helium on the other. Thus, astronomers discovered for the first time a star that spontaneously developed two opposite faces.
For the first time, scientists have imaged a self-forming double-sided star.
“The surface of the white dwarf completely changes from one side to the other. When I show its images to people, they are stunned,” said D. Ilaria Caiazzo, an astrophysicist at Caltech in the US who led the research published in the journal Nature. said.
JANUS’S NAME IS GIVEN
Located a thousand light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus, the object was named “Janus” after it was discovered to be two-faced, although its official scientific name is ZTF J203349.8+322901.1. Janus, the god of transitions, a mythological being, is also double-faced.
Janus was first discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), an instrument that scans the night sky from Caltech’s Palomar Observatory near San Diego.
TURNS ONE AXIS EVERY 15 MINUTES
Caiazzo said he was researching white dwarfs during this period, and the rapid changes in Janus’ brightness drew him towards him. Caiazzo’s later observations revealed that Janus rotates on its axis every 15 minutes.
Spectrometry measurements that revealed a star’s chemical makeup showed that one side of the star was almost entirely hydrogen and the other side was almost entirely helium.
HOW TO MAKE A WHITE Dwarf?
On the other hand, Caiazzo noted that the helium side of Janus has a patchy appearance like the Sun, while the hydrogen side has a smooth appearance:
Because Janus’ outer surface is made up of swirling gas, the star’s two-faced nature is difficult to explain. It may be in a rare transition predicted to occur during Janus’ white dwarf evolution. White dwarfs are the boiling remnants of stars that once looked like the Sun. “
