The snowman star and other weird shapes found in space
- Published
A huge star, that's bigger than the Sun, has been found in space in the shape of a snowman. It was found by scientists at the University of Warwick, who say the snowman was probably formed after two dwarf stars joined together and exploded.
As well as being an odd-shaped asteroid, this log-like space rock is special because it's red in colour, which means it was covered in living, organic molecules. It is also the first object to be discovered that formed in another solar system and then travelled to our Solar System.
And how about this skull-shaped asteroid with its catchy name of A/2017 U1? The rock was only 400m wide but was travelling very fast – more than 20,000 metres per second!
This is not an x-ray image at a hospital, this is actually an image captured by Nasa using a special telescope. The picture shows a cloud of substance released after a star exploded and formed to look like a golden hand.
This diamond ring in the sky is a planetary nebula, named Abell 33, along with a bright star, named HD 83535. A planetary nebula is one of the last stages of life for a star. It definitely adds a bit of sparkle to space!
- Published6 January 2020
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