A STELLAR MYSTERY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 316, 29 March 1928, Page 11

A STELLAR MYSTERY

ONE STAR BECOMES TWO ASTRONOMERS PUZZLED By Cable.— Press Association. — Copyright . CAPETOWN, Tuesday. The staff of the Union Observatory at Johannesburg records a remarkanle observation made last week. Mr. Bernard Dawson, at the La Plata Observatory, Argentina, reported that the star Nova Pictoris was looking strange and he could not properly study it with his small telescope. He therefore asked the officials at Johannesburg to make an examination of the star through their 26 Jin. instrument. This was done by various members of the staff, who claim to have discovered that the star was split in two. Mr. Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal at tie Capetown Observatory, says, however, that it is wrong to say the star is split in two. There are two stars now, and there were two stars before, although they did not know it. Nova Pictoris belongs U> a class of stars which blaze up rapidly in the course of a few days from below the naked eye visiliility to a very brilliant state. The two stars now visible seem to show that they are due to a collision between two stars, or to a grazing impact of two stars. Mr. Jones says he judges the distance between the two stars to be one-fifth of a second of arc. He thinks it is possible that this is the first direct evidence of a collision or of a grazing impact of stars. The origin of the solar system is the direct result of an incidentally similar occurrence. The nebula consequent on the outburst in the Pictoris constellation may condense into planets and form another solar system where life may evolve.—Sun.