Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 8 April 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5719, pp. 210 - 211
DOI: 10.1126/science.1110366
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Perspectives

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Enhanced Perspectives

ASTRONOMY:
Enhanced: A Stellar Swan-Song

Martin Asplund

Some stars can temporarily avoid fading to oblivion as white dwarfs by re-igniting nuclear burning. In such an event, a hot stellar ember balloons within a few years from about the size of Earth to a cool giant star some 100 times the size of the Sun. About 20% of stars like the Sun are predicted to undergo such an episode, but because this phase is very short, only three such born-again giants have ever been observed in the act. In his Perspective, Asplund describes the discovery by Hajduk et al. that the born-again giant Sakurai's object has started to heat up and contract again, only ~10 years after it first swelled up to gigantic proportions. New stellar evolution calculations can explain the extremely rapid transformation of the star.

The author is at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Australian National University, Weston, ACT 2611, Australia. E-mail: martin{at}mso.anu.edu.au

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)