By listening to the beating hearts of stars, astronomers have for the first time identified a rhythm of life for a class of stellar objects that had until now puzzled scientists.
By listening to the beating hearts of stars, astronomers have for the first time identified a rhythm of life for a class of stellar objects that had until now puzzled scientists.
Their findings are reported today in Nature.
“Previously we were finding too many jumbled up notes to understand these pulsating stars properly,” said lead author Professor Tim Bedding from the University of Sydney. “It was a mess, like listening to a cat walking on a piano.”
The international team used data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a space telescope mainly used to detect planets around some of the nearest stars to Earth. It provided the team with brightness measurements of thousands of stars, allowing them to find 60 whose pulsations made sense.
Read more at University of Sydney
Image: This is lead author Professor Tim Bedding. (Credit: University of Sydney)
