The first detailed images of the surface of a giant star have been published in the journal Nature, according to Georgia State University researchers. The photos come from an international team of astronomers, who produced them as part of a recent study.
The giant star, named π1Gruis, is shown to have a nearly circular, dust-free atmosphere outside our solar system. The star is part of the constellation Grus (Latin for the crane, a type of bird), which can be observed in the Southern Hemisphere.
π1Gruis is 350 times larger than the sun and is approaching the end of its 5-billion year life cycle.
“This is the first time that we have such a giant star that is unambiguously imaged with that level of details,” said Dr. Fabien Baron, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. “The reason is there’s a limit to the details we can see based on the size of the telescope used for the observations. For this paper, we used an interferometer. The light from several telescopes is combined to overcome the limit of each telescope, thus achieving a resolution equivalent to that of a much larger telescope.”
