A Sharp Look at the Wind from a Dying Star
Eta Carinae is perhaps the most interesting star in the Milky Way. It is very unstable and has ejected lots of material into space in the last few hundred years. Understanding how Eta Carinae drives its powerful wind can provide clues to the late evolutionary stages of very massive stars. To test whether our ideas of its unique stellar wind are correct, Steward astronomers used the 6.5 meter Clay Telescope together with Steward's Magellan adaptive optics (MagAO) system to image Eta Carinae in two wavelengths at some of the highest angular resolutions ever achieved (FWHM=0.025 arcseconds, which is the angular size of dime seen ~ 100 miles away). One image is at H-alpha emission line (656 nanometer) probing the wind itself, and the other is the continuum (643 nanometer) probing the surface of the star. Comparing the sizes of Eta Carinae in both images can tell us about the extent of the wind. The results suggest that most of the H-alpha emission is emitted in regions about 30 AU (~0.012 arcsec) from the star (I AU is the separation between the Sun and the Earth), in good agreement with stellar -wind model proposed earlier.
More can be found on AAS NOVA HERE.
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