Think about three stars, each the size of at least 12 suns, orbiting one another in outer space. This discovery has gained popularity among astronomers who want to use the data to better understand the cosmos.
According to research published in the Royal Astronomical Society’s Monthly Notices, the researchers believe that there was a fourth star in the system, but it was most likely ‘eaten’ by the other three stars. Experts have described the triple star system as ‘something that is unlike anything that has been seen before.’
‘As far as we know, it is the first of its kind ever detected. We know of many tertiary star systems (three-star systems), but they are typically significantly less massive. The massive stars in this triple are very close together, it is a compact system,’ Alejandro Vigna-Gomez, one of the main authors of the study and postdoc at the Niels Bohr International Academy, said in a press statement.
Initially, the researchers believed that the system only had two stars, but using information from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observatory, citizen scientists were able to track the third star.
Triple star systems are uncommon in deep space; according to NASA, there are now just 10 percent of all star systems in the universe. This system is larger than any earlier finding in this field, despite the fact that the first of its kind was made in September 2021.
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