Hubble captures the intricacies of R Aquarii, a symbiotic binary star about 700 light-years from Earth

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a close look at one of the most turbulent stars in our galaxy, weaving a huge spiral pattern among the stars. Hubble images capture its details and its evolution is presented in a unique time-lapse video.

Residing only about 700 light years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius, R Aquarii is a symbiotic binary star: a type of binary star system consisting of a white dwarf and a red giant surrounded by a large dynamic nebula . As the closest symbiotic star to Earth, R Aquarii was studied by none other than Edwin Hubble in an effort to understand the mechanism that powers the system.

R Aquarii undergoes violent eruptions which project enormous filaments of incandescent gas. This dramatically demonstrates how the universe redistributes nuclear energy products that form deep within stars and return to space.

R Aquarii belongs to a class of double stars called symbiotic stars. The main star is an aging red giant and its companion is a burned-out compact star known as a white dwarf. The red giant primary star is classified as a Mira variable which is more than 400 times larger than our sun. The bloated monster star pulsates, changes temperature and varies in brightness by a factor of 750 over a period of about 390 days.

At its peak, the star is blinding with a brightness nearly 5,000 times that of our sun. As the white dwarf approaches the red giant during its 44-year orbital period, it gravitationally siphons hydrogen gas. This material accumulates in the accretion disk surrounding the white dwarf, until it undergoes a powerful explosion and jet ejection, notably during the white dwarf’s closest approach to the star. red giant donor.

These events are of more than just passing interest to astronomers and laymen alike, as they are a known means – along with truly titanic but extremely rare supernova events – of releasing chemical elements. heavier than hydrogen and helium in the interstellar medium. Heavier elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are essential building blocks of planets like Earth and life forms like ours. They form deep within stars, where the temperature is high enough to fuse hydrogen and helium.

This explosion ejects powerful jets, seen as filaments shooting out of the binary system, forming loops and trails as plasma emerges in streamers. The plasma is twisted by the force of the explosion and channeled upward and outward by powerful magnetic fields. The flow appears to fold back on itself in a spiral pattern. The filaments shine in visible light because they are powered by the dazzling radiation of the stellar duo that is R Aquarii. The nebula around the binary star is known as Cederblad 211 and could be the remnant of a past nova.

The scale of the event is extraordinary, even in astronomical terms, since the emitting material can be traced back at least 400 billion kilometers – or 2,500 times the distance between the Sun and Earth – from the central core .

The ESA/Hubble team developed a unique timelapse of the object composed of several observation programs spanning from 2014 to 2023. Across the five images, the rapid and spectacular evolution of the binary star and its surrounding nebula can be observed.

The binary star dims and brightens, seen by the size of the red diffraction spikes surrounding it, due to the strong pulsations of the red giant star. The nebula is depicted mainly in green colors, but bluer parts appear and disappear: this is because they are illuminated by the beacon-shaped beam of light from the rotating binary star sweeping across them.